News

Sir Dave Brailsford has described his relationship with Chris Froome as “great”, despite his decision to omit the four-times Tour de France winner from his Ineos Grenadiers team selection for this year’s race, which starts in Nice on Saturday. Froome had already agreed to join the Israel Start-Up Nation team for 2021 but Brailsford said: […]

Aided by cooler weather and reinforcements, firefighters in California made headway on Wednesday in containing the three giant blazes burning across the Bay Area. The fires, which were sparked last week by an unusual bout of lightning and stoked by an extended heatwave that desiccated fire-fueling vegetation, were calmed in part by a marine layer […]

Iran has finally agreed to grant the UN nuclear watchdog access to two key sites that the US and Israeli intelligence agencies suspect once secretly hosted nuclear material or activities, ending a months-long standoff over the issue. Wednesday’s breakthrough in the dispute over the sites near Karaj and Isfahan was announced in a joint statement […]

Authorities in Belarus have questioned the Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich as part of an investigation into an opposition council created to facilitate a political transition in the country. Alexander Lukashenko, who has been president for 26 years and is under pressure from protesters to step down after a rigged election win this month, has […]

A gospel-singing Brazilian lawmaker accused of masterminding the assassination of the husband who was once her adopted son is facing calls for her expulsion from congress so she can face murder charges. Flordelis dos Santos de Souza – a favela-born celebrity congresswoman whose rise to stardom was celebrated in a film featuring some of Brazil’s […]

Spanish fishing boats are landing only a tenth of their normal summer catch of octopus – an unheard-of drop. To date, since 1 July they have caught 38 tonnes of octopus, compared with a normal average of 378 tonnes over the same period. Income has slumped by 84%. Catches vary from year to year but […]

French police are hunting the perpetrators of a series of savage animal mutilations across the country in recent weeks. Investigators have advised the owners of horses and donkeys to be particularly vigilant after more than a dozen attacks left animals dead or severely injured. Officers say they are mystified by the motives for the mutilations […]