Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

Changes galore, and notable ones at that, across both matchday squads. Steve Borthwick hands fan and media darling (and bloody good player) Henry Pollock his first start in the back row, where he will be joined by the returning Tom Curry. In the backs Tommy Freeman returns to a wing berth at the expense of Tom Roebuck, which brings Ollie Lawrence back into the centres. The bench is a 6:2, with Jack Van Poortvliet and Marcus Smith as the backs options.

Jesse Van Rootselaar's chats describing gun violence were flagged by tools that monitor the company's LLM for misuse and banned in June 2025. Staff at the company debated whether or not to reach out to Canadian law enforcement over the behavior but ultimately did not, according to the Wall Street Journal. An OpenAI spokesperson said Van Rootselaar's activity did not meet the criteria for reporting to law enforcement; the company reached out to Canadian authorities after the incident.

England 21 Ireland 42 Twickenham has so often been a graveyard for Ireland teams, but in time, we might well look back on this remarkable bonus point victory as the rebirth of Andy Farrell's side. With half an hour gone here, Ireland were 22-0 to the good, and as The Fields of Athenry rang around the stadium, the large travelling support were in dreamland. So too were the Ireland players. England, meanwhile, were shell-shocked.

Sweden's biathletes have struggled to deliver medals at the Winter Olympics and on Friday they finally ran out of patience with their waxing team, blaming a bad job on their skis for an embarrassingly poor performance in the men's mass start. Often among the favourites in biathlon events, the Swedes had a dismal day in the final men's race of the Games,

In 2025, 171 hours were spent stuck in a jam during peak hours, a figure that is equivalent to five working days, according to data from the navigator company Tom Tom. Based on figures collected by GPS devices, the data reveals that it takes drivers 62.5% longer to cover the same distance they would cover when the traffic circulates more smoothly. During peak hours, the average speed was 18.5 km/h (11.5 mph) and the distance covered in 15 minutes was 4.6 km (2.8 miles).

Gardaí on Friday released an image of a tattoo on the man's arm in a bid to identify him such were the facial injuries sustained during the horrific assault. Gardaí thanked the public and the media for their assistance in identifying the man. The man remains in a critical condition in Beaumont Hospital on Saturday. Two men arrested on Friday in connection with the assault remain in garda custody for questioning.

Recent revelations from news agency Reuters that the US is "developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including hate speech and terrorist propaganda," as a method to counter what it sees as excessive censorship in other parts of the world is troubling to the EU. Even if the plans appear to have been delayed and detail is thin, the US position is clear.

This week's search of an area of land on the Wicklow-Kildare in relation to the disappearances of JoJo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob has brought up mixed emotions for their families.

A Russian assassination plot targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was uncovered after intelligence sources revealed operatives rented apartments close to his office in Kyiv. The alleged Kremlin plan aimed to capture or kill the Ukrainian leader during the early stages of Russia's full-scale invasion, according to reporting by CNN. Sources claim Russian agents were instructed to eliminate Zelenskyy if he failed to escape the area.

Bulgaria is home to the largest Turkish community in the Balkans. Around 500,000 ethnic Turks live in the southeastern European country of 8 million, making up about 8% of Bulgaria's total population, according to a 2021 census. Most are descendants of Turkish settlers who came to Bulgaria with the Ottoman conquest in the 14th and 15th centuries. Many settled in the southern and north-eastern provinces of Bulgaria. Members of this ethnic minority, who largely subscribe to Sunni Islam, still speak Turkish, unlike the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims known as Pomaks.

Ukrainian forces struck a major industrial site deep inside Russia's Udmurt region, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday. The attack was confirmed by local officials. "One of the republics facilities was attacked by drones" launched by Ukraine, regional head Alexander Brechalov said in a Telegram post. The Ukrainian military said it used domestically produced Flamingo missiles to hit the plant, located about 1,400 kilometers (800 miles) from Ukraine.

According to the cybersecurity group InformNapalm, hackers from the Fenix analytical cyber centre monitored Russian military personnel around the clock from mid-2025 to February 2026, accessing drone monitoring systems and intercepting operational chats. The intelligence was passed directly to Ukraine's Defence Forces, helping counter waves of drone attacks and contributing to strikes on Russian command posts and launch sites. Read more related news:

The recent Great Finance Hire shortage is not just a challenge, it's a wake-up call for London businesses reliant on financial expertise. As firms scramble to fill vital roles, the stakes have never been higher for hiring a financial controller in London . We will provide a deep dive into the creative solutions companies are implementing to overcome this recruitment hurdle. Expect to come away with actionable tips that can help your business secure the financial talent it desperately needs.

Worldwide, autocracies are on the rise, populists are gaining momentum, democratic societies are under pressure. Wars, inflation, fear of economic decline are causing great uncertainty. The "Germany-Monitor 2025" shows that the vast majority of Germans believe in democracy, and that support for democracy as a form of government is increasing, especially in the east of the country. This was announced by the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany, Elisabeth Kaiser, in Berlin on Thursday this week:

A man who sexually abused five of his children, who were locked in a room for days at a time without food and were forced to drink urine, has been jailed for 20 years.

Getty Images Two people have been charged with murder after a three-year-old boy died in Woolwich, south-east London. Police officers were called to a hospital on 3 January after concerns were raised about the boy who had been admitted with "serious injuries". The child then died on 19 January. He has been named by police as Isiayah Henry. The Met Police said

Four years on from the invasion, we talk to the Ukrainians who have settled in Co Kerry, why they chose to come here, the heartbreaking stories from their homeland, and dealing with the 'small percentage of haters' The vast majority of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who now live in Ireland could never have imagined they would still be here four years after the full-scale invasion of their country by Russia.

A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade cameras installed by local authorities to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said. The episode was detailed in a Facebook post on the city of Catania's official page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility.

The template for beating England in their own backyard was laid out by head coach Andrew Browne and his Irish U-20 charges as they stunned their fancied hosts in front of 13,000 at the Rec in Bath.

Defence ministers of the E5 grouping France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom are meeting in the Polish city of Krakow this morning.

"We are not given academic leave... the rector's office does its best to send its students to serve under contract,"

One graduate with a maths degree says he spent more than a year applying to over 1,000 roles in the U.K. without landing a single offer-only to secure a job in Austria within weeks. "The job market in the U.K. is so ridiculous," Anna, his Austrian-born partner, said in a TikTok video that's now resonating with thousands of frustrated young workers. "Even for qualified people, it's so hard to find a job."

"I 'm the most hated man in town," Ray McKelvie told me. The town in question was Clinton, British Columbia, approximately 350 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, on Highway 97. Later, I asked another Clinton resident whether McKelvie's claim was true. She thought for a moment. "Well, there's Joe, who lives in the trailer park," she said. "We don't like him much either. But it's about even."

Gardaí are appealing for witnesses to locate the driver who was believed to be driving a grey/silver saloon with partial registration number 141-D. The collision, involving a car and a pedestrian, occurred at approximately 7.10pm on Ratoath Road, Finglas, Dublin 11. The juvenile male pedestrian, aged in his teens, was brought to Children's Health Ireland at Temple Street for treatment of non life-threatening injuries.

Four years on from the invasion, we talk to the Ukrainians who have settled in Co Kerry, why they chose to come here, the heartbreaking stories from their homeland, and dealing with the 'small percentage of haters'

Now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after being stripped of his royal titles, the ex-prince was arrested at his home on the Sandringham Estate on suspicion of misconduct in public office in connection to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, the former Duchess of York, who's also mentioned multiple times in the Epstein files, has been MIA. Ferguson has kept a extremely low profile in the past few months as questions have swirled over her relationship with Epstein.

Fighting Russian forces launched 448 attacks on 34 settlements in Ukraine's front-line Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring a six-year-old child and damaging homes, cars and other infrastructure, regional governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram app. Russian drone, missile and artillery attacks on Ukraine's Kherson region injured five people and damaged homes, including seven high-rise buildings, the local military administration said on Telegram.

A snowstorm dumped several inches of snow across parts of Vienna overnight into Friday. Vienna International Airport paused flights on Friday due to heavy snowfall. Snow and ice on the roads of the city led to multiple traffic accidents, the public broadcaster Osterreichischer Rundfunk reported on Friday. What do we know about the snowstorm? Heavy snowfall has been reported in several parts of Austria since Thursday.

Four skiers were killed in avalanches in the Tyrol region. Three of them died in a massive avalanche near the St Anton ski resort, officials said. Two of the victims were recovered from the snow but could not be saved, and the third died in the hospital, a police spokesman said. A German skier died in an avalanche in Nauders. He had been skiing off-piste with his 16-year-old son, who survived with serious injuries, police said.

A new law empowering Turkey's central government to seize historic properties from local authorities is raising fears that heritage sites are becoming the latest front in a wider campaign against opposition-led municipalities. Among the sites at stake are cultural venues run by the Istanbul municipality, whose mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu launched an ambitious conservation drive and expanded cultural programming before he was jailed last year after announcing plans to run for president.

Last week, the hotel's leaseholder, Trinity Hospitality, sought a court injunction "to reduce excessive noise transfer from Yamamori Izakaya into the hotel". It sparked a protest outside the hotel on Monday by protesters concerned about a drop in the number of late-night venues. The Hoxton Hotel, which neighbours Yamamori Izakaya, a Japanese restaurant that holds music events, claims it has been forced to close around a quarter of its rooms because of "numerous guest complaints about late-night, low-frequency music noise and vibration".

Fresh research from the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) shows nearly a quarter of Dutch adults, 24%, believe people around them see gambling as normal behavior. Men were significantly more likely than women to share that view. The regulator surveyed 1,000 residents and found that when gambling comes up casually in conversations with friends or family, people are more likely to join in themselves.

Staffing changes paused following mailing mix-up The Taoiseach, Tánaiste and education ministers held urgent calls last weekend as a PR crisis over the provision of special needs assistants (SNAs) to schools was unfolding. The "early" transmission of notices to schools over staffing had just been realised, and Coalition leaders foresaw the distress that was about to be unleashed on schools and the disability sector.

The sum of exports and imports between the two countries last year totalled 251.8 billion (roughly $296.6 billion), a 2.1% increase, according to Destatis. China was Germany's most important trading partner from 2016 all the way through to 2023. In 2024, the US briefly held the title. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is also set to visit China next week, where he is set to discuss trade and other topics.