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Delhi NCR news: Noida schools closed tomorrow due to…; check details Why did Jagdeep Dhankhar quit? Not health, THESE may be reasons for his abrupt announcement… This YouTuber to make Bollywood debut opposite Wamiqa Gabbi in Karan Johar film; not Elvish Yadav, Ashish Chanchlani, Gaurav Taneja, Dhruv Rathee Bihar SIR: EC issues BIG statement, says

Time to get your last orders in before the closures (Picture: Getty) Ten locations of a popular pub chain will close their doors for good as soon as Friday, it’s been announced. Brewdog said they were unable to ‘find a formula’ to make the bars viable due to multiple ‘limiting factors’. CEO James Taylor said:

Child killer Lucy Letby has been heard moaning that ‘she’s the fattest she’s ever been’ after gorging on junk food while behind bars. The serial killer is serving 15 life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder eight more while working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Letby is

The Government did not confirm how much individual households are estimated to save from the cheaper clean electricity. By  Steph Spyro , Deputy Political Editor 14:30, Tue, Jul 22, 2025 Updated: 14:30, Tue, Jul 22, 2025 Ed Miliband has signed a deal on Sizewell C (Image: Getty/EDF) Consumers’ energy bills will rise to fund the

The rebels warned that Russia was on the threshold of mass tragedies and that Putin and his regime would not hesitate to condemn people to death and hunger for the sake of power and war. By  John Varga , World News Reporter 14:27, Tue, Jul 22, 2025 Updated: 14:30, Tue, Jul 22, 2025 Fighters from

Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. HOME News Politics Royal Showbiz & TV Sport Finance Travel Life & Style Comment UK World Politics Royal US Weather Science History Weird Nature InYourArea The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said most of the victims remain unidentified, and many of the images captured women in deeply intimate

Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]   MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Parliament resumed Tuesday for the first time since the center-left Labor Party won one of the nation’s largest-ever majorities in the May elections. The day was largely ceremonial, with reminders of conflict in the Middle East. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside Parliament House on Tuesday, calling for the government to impose sanctions on Israel after Australia joined another 27 countries in issuing a joint statement, saying the war in Gaza “must end now.” Security guards prevented 15 demonstrators from entering the public gallery of the Senate while Attorney-General Sam Mostyn, who represents Australia’s head of state King Charles III, was giving a speech to lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. But Sen. Mehreen Faruqi, deputy leader of the minor party Australian Greens, made a silent protest by holding up a sign in the chamber during Mostyn’s speech that said: “Gaza is starving, words won’t feed them, sanction Israel.” Australia has imposed financial and travel sanctions on individual Israelis, including government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But the Australian government has not imposed wider sanctions on the state. Joint statement sparks debate Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke described the joint statement as the strongest words his government had used on the conflict in Gaza. “When you can make a statement together with so many other significant powers, then we’re all hoping that there’ll be something that will break this,” Burke told ABC. “What we are watching on the other side of the world is indefensible. The hostages still need to be released, but the war needs to end,” Burke added. But senior opposition lawmaker Jonathon Duniam described Australia joining 27 other nations in signing the statement as “alarming.” “There is more to this issue than this letter betrays and I think it is a sad turn of events for our government to have joined with other countries in signing this letter,” Duniam said. Australia’s 48th Parliament was opened with Indigenous ceremonies in Parliament House on a day that was otherwise steeped in centuries of British Westminster political tradition. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thanked the traditional owners of the national capital, Canberra, at a Welcome to Country ceremony. He noted that such ceremonies performed by Indigenous people to welcome visitors to their traditional land at the start of a new parliament had been introduced by a Labor government in 2007. “In the 48th Parliament, we write the next chapter. Let us do it with the same sense of grace and courage that First Nations people show us with their leadership,” Albanese said. Biggest Australian government majority since 1996 Labor won 94 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where governments are formed. Labor’s majority is the largest since Prime Minister John Howard’s conservative coalition won 94 seats in 1996, when the lower chamber had only 148 seats. Howard stayed in power for almost 12 years, and Albanese is the first prime minister since then to lead a party to consecutive election victories, following an extraordinary era of political instability. The main opposition Liberal Party has elected its first woman leader, Sussan Ley, after one of the party’s worst election results on record. Her conservative coalition holds 43 seats in the House, while independent lawmakers and minor parties that are not aligned with either the government or opposition hold 13. No party holds a majority in the 76-seat Senate. Labor holds 29 seats and the conservatives 27 seats. The Australian Greens hold 10 seats, which is the next largest bloc. The government will likely prefer to negotiate with the conservatives or Greens to get legislation through the Senate, rather than deal with multiple minor parties and independents. Read More

It may be too early to start asking existential questions about the British & Irish Lions but, sitting in Melbourne’s Southbank, slap bang in the middle of Aussie rules territory, where union makes barely a ripple, you begin to wonder. The sea of red will roll in at the weekend but, for now, Melbourne is pretty much oblivious. “Some kind of carnival on I think,” was one taxi driver’s assessment. None of this is to criticise Australia. It is a wonderful country, sports mad and as the loosehead prop James Slipper says of the locals: “They’re still Australian, so they’ll be there. I know they’ll be there. It’s one thing about this country, regardless of the sport, they’ll get behind the national colours.” If you assess the key criteria of a Lions tour, however, it is hard to argue that they are all being met at the moment. The beauty of Lions tours is the notion of four disparate unions coming together, travelling to take on southern hemisphere powerhouses against the odds. With the Lions clear favourites for the first Test, this tour has already deviated from that premise and so there is an understandable argument to seek out other powerhouses. That, in turn, brings us to France’s interest in joining the party. The number one reason to entertain a Lions tour of France is, to be frank, the bottom line. The 2023 World Cup proved costly for France – an expected net loss of €13m (£11.3m), according to a damning report over mismanagement released in April by the French court of audit – but for World Rugby it generated record-breaking revenues of €500m (£433m). Evidently the ground is fertile. Second is the prospect of a competitive series. The current one may well turn out to be a one-sided affair and the impetus for change will be greater. To paraphrase George Berkeley, if a Lion mauls a Wallaby in the forest, does it make a sound? There is a stark contrast with the idea of warm-up matches against, say, Toulouse, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Racing 92, one of Bayonne, Biarritz and Perpignan in the Basque region, and maybe even Vannes, whose club song is to the same tune as the Welsh national anthem. It is a mouthwatering prospect, the potential for competitive matches from the word go, as was the case in New Zealand eight years ago. The French clubs would be without some of their overseas internationals should they be selected for their countries’ summer tours but it is hard to envisage blowouts. France have the depth to ensure they do not need to worry about resting all of their stars. They may have lost their series 3-0 in New Zealand but their C team gave the All Blacks an almighty scare in the opener in Dunedin. “Fabien Galthié looks for 42 key players and works with them together,” Abdel Benazzi, the French federation vice-president, told the Guardian. “If [Antoine] Dupont is not fit, we have another player and we use the players as we’ve seen in New Zealand.” None of that is to say Australia should be stripped of future Lions tours, rather that their existing formats could do with updating. That Australia are not as competitive as hoped is down to the relative strength of the four home nations and the Wallabies’ long-term decline. But to take a tour away from them would be financially ruinous – Rugby Australia made a $37m (£17.9m) loss last year but the Lions are expected to wipe the debt. Lions fans follow the action from the stands. Photograph: David Davies/PA It feels as if this has been a Test series against Australia rather than a tour, however. The warm-up matches and the constant travel provide headaches but such is the professionalism in dealing with logistics among the backroom staff that they no longer pose the challenges they once did. Lions tours are said to be a glorious anachronism but Tuesday’s match against the First Nations & Pasifika XV offers evidence to the contrary. It should be that the Lions squad must negotiate that fixture with players who at least have half a chance of making the Test side. Instead, a handful of players have been seconded for this fixture only – such is their temporary status that they may even head home before the tour has ended. Australia are not entirely innocent here either. Just as his former right-hand man Andy Farrell has done, Joe Schmidt has prioritised the series at the expense of the wider tour, letting an opportunity to spread the union gospel around the country pass by in refusing to release his senior players to play in the warm-up matches. You could argue they would not have made enough of a difference to stop the Lions juggernaut from arriving in Brisbane for the first Test with five wins from five in Australia, but there is something special about watching rivalries blossom in the warm-up matches before they are renewed in the Test arena. While a tour of France may be a shot in the eye for nostalgia, for romance, we are already experiencing plenty. Remaining in Europe opens the door to so many supporters priced out of the southern hemisphere trips. “In rugby we need something new,” adds Benazzi. “Thinking about what the youngsters want, what a new public want. We have our legacy with the Six Nations and the World Cup but we have to be thinking about what we can do within our hands. The Lions and France have the same destiny, we cannot live apart, we have to build something new.” The cons of a tour of France include the fact that player release may be a problem given how late the Top 14 season runs, but Benazzi anticipates buy-in from the clubs and the French players and public alike. The Top 14 has shown itself to be more malleable than it often appears by agreeing to bring forward the end of the domestic season

Ed Sheeran will return to Australian shores in 2026 as part of his all-new Loop tour. The event has big boots to fill, after Sheeran broke the Australian record for attendance at a ticketed event twice in the same month during his last visit. In March 2023, he performed to crowds of 110,000 and 108,000 over two nights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the Mathematics Tour. The Divide Tour in 2018 was also a record breaker, after he sold more than one million tickets across Australia and New Zealand. It earned him the title of most tickets sold for an Australian, New Zealand tour, beating the 1997 record held by Dire Straits. Taylor Swift’s Australian leg of the Eras tour came close to Sheeran’s record, selling 96,000 tickets at the MCG on the biggest night and performing to a total of 624,500 across seven nights. Sheeran was recently celebrated as a 12-time member of Spotify’s Billions Club, and his 2017 hit Shape of You was Apple’s most-streamed song for the past decade. New tricks, but also back to basics Ed Sheeran at Bertie Blossoms pub in London speaking to media and fans.  (Supplied: Poolo) Upon the tour announcement, Sheeran spoke from Bertie Blossoms pub in London to fans and press at Sydney’s Lord Dudley, which was transformed into The Old Phone pub, filled with Sheeran’s pictures and memorabilia. He said the Loop tour would feature a “new stage, new tricks, new set, new songs, old songs.” The new tour will be less complex than the Mathematics Tour. Instead, as the name suggests, the tour will be focused on the loop pedal, a device that allows musicians to record musical phrases and play them in a continuous loop. “The pedal from when I started has expanded … it’s kind of like a loop pedal on steroids now,” Sheeran said. He said the show had evolved so much over time that he felt like he had lost sight of what was great about live shows. And while he was bringing things back to basics, Sheeran said to still expect plenty of tricks. Sheeran’s connection with Australia Ed Sheeran will begin the 2026 tour in Auckland, New Zealand.  (ABC: Supplied) The worldwide Loop tour begins in Australia and New Zealand, and Sheeran says he is “pumped to kick it off” there. He said Australia was a special place for him, not just because of its cultural similarities to the UK, but because it was where his international career began. “The first place I was accepted as a musician and loved outside of the United Kingdom was Australia,” he said. Sheeran commonly uses locals as his support acts, and this tour will be no exception. Missy Higgins, Fergus James, Bliss n Eso, Budjerah, and Conrad Sewell have all opened for him in the past. Sheeran was quickly stopped by his publicist before revealing which Australian acts would be joining him in 2026. However, he did tell the press he plans to visit schools while he is in the country as part of his music foundation. “There [are] areas of Australia that [have] amazing music being created in,” Sheeran said. Sheeran’s latest releases, Azizam and Sapphire, are heavily influenced by Persian and Indian music — and he says cross-cultural influence will play a big part in the upcoming tour. “Once we get to Australia, I’d love to come and do stuff with First Nations artists as well,” Sheeran said. “I think that’s been very fun throughout the tour, going different places, soaking up the culture, playing different instruments, different music, different languages.” Promoter Michael Gudinski and Ed Sheeran had a close relationship.  (ABC News: David Weber) Sheeran also had close relationships with music executive Michael Gudenski and cricketer Shane Warne. He performed at Gudenski’s memorial service in 2021, and his 2023 MCG show honoured Gudenski’s vision for him. Sheeran said on his return, he would visit the Warne and Gudenski families while privately reflecting on those relationships, but the tour itself will be separate. When is Sheeran appearing? Friday, January 16 GO Media Stadium | Auckland, NZ Wednesday, January 21 Sky Stadium | Wellington, NZ Saturday, January 24 Apollo Projects Stadium | Christchurch, NZ Saturday, January 31 Optus Stadium | Perth, WA Friday, February 13 Accor Stadium | Sydney, NSW Saturday, February 14 Accor Stadium | Sydney, NSW Friday, February 20 Suncorp Stadium | Brisbane, QLD Saturday, February 21 Suncorp Stadium | Brisbane, QLD Thursday, February 26 Marvel Stadium | Melbourne, VIC Friday, February 27 Marvel Stadium | Melbourne, VIC Thursday, March 5 Adelaide Oval | Adelaide, SA Read More

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