For nearly two decades, the prolific puzzle maker, a retired urologist, charmed solvers with his penchant for witty, waggish puns.

© Photo illustration by The New York Times. Photo, via Megalo Media, Inc.

Serbia, the Kremlin’s closest Balkan friend, is warming its ties with another would-be EU member, Ukraine – despite the two states’ very different relations with Moscow.

Serbia, the Kremlin’s closest Balkan friend, is warming its ties with another would-be EU member, Ukraine – despite the two states’ very different relations with Moscow.

Veteran broadcaster accuses channel of ‘clear violations’ of Ofcom’s due impartiality rules

• UK politics live – latest updates

The former Sky News political editor Adam Boulton has said GB News should lose its broadcasting licence as he accused Britain’s media regulator of failing in its duty to protect impartial television news.

Boulton, who was Sky News’s political editor for 25 years after the channel launched in 1989, said he believed it was too late to revoke GB News’s broadcasting rights, despite bringing a partisan brand of coverage to British television since its debut in 2021.

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© Photograph: Adrian Green/Persuasion Communications/PA

© Photograph: Adrian Green/Persuasion Communications/PA

© Photograph: Adrian Green/Persuasion Communications/PA

Brussels has already gone cold on a scheme to allow some aspirant countries like Albania and Serbia second-tier membership – but that doesn’t mean that other creative approaches to European enlargement are off the table.

Brussels has already gone cold on a scheme to allow some aspirant countries like Albania and Serbia second-tier membership – but that doesn’t mean that other creative approaches to European enlargement are off the table.

Authorities investigate Florent Montaclair over award given to himself and others including Noam Chomsky

At a ceremony at the French national assembly attended by Nobel prize winners, former government ministers, MPs, decorated scientists and academics, all attention was on a previously unknown literature professor.

Florent Montaclair, then 46, a balding, bespectacled figure in an ill-fitting suit and rosé-coloured shirt, was receiving the 2016 Gold Medal of Philology - the study of linguistics – from an international society of the same name.

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© Photograph: Lionel VADAM/PHOTOPQR/L'EST REPUBLICAIN/MAXPP

© Photograph: Lionel VADAM/PHOTOPQR/L'EST REPUBLICAIN/MAXPP

© Photograph: Lionel VADAM/PHOTOPQR/L'EST REPUBLICAIN/MAXPP

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve a $110 billion takeover by Paramount Skydance Corp. But this is not a done deal yet. Chris Palmeri reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

Es ist einer der größten Mediendeals: Ende Juni 2025 hatte RTL die Übernahme von Sky angekündigt. Jetzt endlich geben die Wettbewerbsbehörden grünes Licht. Die Hoffnungen sind groß.

The proposal reflects a global reality in which governments appeal to President Trump’s vanity to get American might on their side.

© Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Kirsten Vangsness, actress and writer, joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." More than 3,000 Hollywood actors, directors and screenwriters have penned a letter opposing the $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance Corp., citing concerns about job losses and higher costs with fewer choices for consumers. (Source: Bloomberg)

Kirsten Vangsness, actress and writer, joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." More than 3,000 Hollywood actors, directors and screenwriters have penned a letter opposing the $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance Corp., citing concerns about job losses and higher costs with fewer choices for consumers. (Source: Bloomberg)

Succession is the question as Cox directs and stars as a distillery boss tempting estranged brother Cumming back into the Highland fold

For his directorial debut, Brian Cox is painting in pretty broad strokes and primary colours; Glenrothan is a sentimental comedy-drama from screenwriter David Ashton about the troubled reunion of two brothers in Scotland. It can be a bit soppy, sometimes resembling Sunday-night TV comfort food, but this big-hearted picture wins you over, and there are certainly some marvellous panoramic shots of the Highlands.

Cox himself plays Sandy, the glowering chief of a hugely profitable family-owned distillery which provides employment for the entire locality, and run by the fiercely competent Jess (Shirley Henderson). Sandy effectively inherited the job from his late father, a stern disciplinarian remembered in traumatised flashback scenes – for this role, Brian Cox has drolly cast his son Alan Cox.

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© Photograph: Graeme Hunter PIctures/© Brodie Productions

© Photograph: Graeme Hunter PIctures/© Brodie Productions

© Photograph: Graeme Hunter PIctures/© Brodie Productions

Der Discounter Lidl wird demnächst immerhin in Nordirland einen Pub eröffnen und der gesamten Insel vielleicht wieder kulturellen Auftrieb geben.

As “the first nerd to enter poker,” he helped transform a game long ruled by intuition into one based on game theory, probability and logic.

Thinktank says algorithms are fuelling isolation and division after analysing posts shown to social media users

Reform UK voters are the least likely to see posts from friends and family on social media and most likely to see content from brands and news organisations, a study has found.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank said algorithms were fuelling isolation and division after its research analysing users’ feeds on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky and TikTok found that only 13% of Reform UK voters saw content from someone they knew, compared with 23% of Green party voters.

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© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. have sold down a multi-billion dollar bridge loan backing Paramount Skydance Corp.’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. to a wider group of banks, a key step in one of the biggest M&A financings of the year.

When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – which is why these images caused such a stir

Words can tell a story, but it’s pictures that will make you believe in it. Such is the power of a photograph; the ability to strip away illusions, to illuminate something hidden, and sometimes force us to accept unpalatable truths. When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – occasionally even to the point that a picture changes the course of history.

How might life have been different for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had he not been photographed clutching the midriff of the 17-year-old girl he would later claim he had never met? Without this haunting triptych of the former prince, the late Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein’s fixer, Ghislaine Maxwell, hovering in the background, there would have been nothing physical to connect the then prince with a trafficking victim. Though for years Andrew’s friends insisted that the photograph must have been doctored, buried within the Epstein files recently released by the US Department of Justice is a note from Maxwell that appears to confirm it is real.

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© Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

© Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

© Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

Mikhail Khodorkovsky says Russian security services may seek to create a ‘sense of vulnerability’ in Britain

Vladimir Putin is likely to stage another Salisbury-style attack on UK soil unless the government adopts more aggressive tactics against the Kremlin, the exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said.

The former oil tycoon has emerged as a leading figure in Russian diaspora opposition circles and claims to be well-informed about current thinking and developments among Moscow’s elite.

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© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Paramount Skydance Corp. may have won out against Netflix Inc. in the fight to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., but there are enough market cross-currents and doubts around the pending $111 billion deal to make buying shares of the target an enticing wager.