Injured Ben Stokes at risk of watching final day of Ashes tour from SCG pavilion

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Ben Stokes is set to spend the final day of this Ashes tour watching on from the old pavilion at the SCG and hoping for a miracle in his absence after seeing yet another Test series cut short by injury,The all-rounder had worked hard to get through all five Tests in Australia only to fall at the final hurdle, limping off 10 balls into his opening spell on the fourth morning in apparent distress,An England spokesperson later confirmed it was an issue with his right abductor (groin),Stokes did bat later in the day, emerging at No 8 but falling for one after struggling to move at the crease,The upshot is that when England come to defend a target on the final day – their lead was 119 overnight, eight wickets down – they will do so without their seam-bowling captain.

“I don’t know the exact injury, but he’s moving pretty gingerly,” said Jacob Bethell, who was unbeaten on 142 overnight and will be tasked with swelling the final total that Australia need to claim a 4-1 series win.“I don’t think that bodes too well for him bowling tomorrow.”As for his own day, having left his parents, Graham and Giselle, in tears in the Brewongle Stand after registering his maiden first-class century and thwarting Australia’s attack, Bethell played it as cool as he appeared out in the middle.Asked if his near-miss 96 in New Zealand last winter had weighed on his mind, the 22-year-old replied: “Not really.I knew it was coming.

“It’s just nice to get over that milestone, it still hasn’t sunk in.It gives me a lot of confidence to keep doing it, especially as people will stop talking about it.I got a [one-day international] hundred in the summer and I’ve had to wait a while to raise the bat again but it’s an addictive feeling.It’s pretty special.”When later shown the celebrations of his family, Bethell accepted: “That’s pretty special.

[Dad] is actually quite emotional,I didn’t know he would be that emotional, but it is pretty cool to see that,”
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Kimmel on Trump’s whitewashing of January 6 anniversary: ‘Don’t give in to this revisionist history’

Late-night hosts observed the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and recapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s first day in a US court.Jimmy Kimmel opened his monologue on Tuesday, 6 January, with an acknowledgment of the date: “Five years ago today, after losing what eventually judges from both sides in cities all around the country unanimously declared to be a free and fair election, Donald Trump tried to overthrow our government in a pathetic and illegal attempt to stay in the White House,” he said. “And there’s no other way to put it. You cannot look at the facts objectively and come to any conclusion other than that.“He tried to force the vice-president to claim voter fraud and refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory, which even his own vice-president refused to do,” he continued

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Dolly, Dreamgirls and Daniel Radcliffe: the biggest Broadway shows of 2026

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Jon Stewart on Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela: ‘This is all exhausting’

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‘I wanted that Raiders of the Lost Ark excitement – you could die any minute’: how we made hit video game Prince of Persia

Programming was very open back in the 1980s. You had to teach yourself, either from magazines, or by swapping tips. When you wrote a video game, you submitted it on a floppy disk to a publisher, like a book manuscript. In my freshman year at Yale university, I sent Deathbounce, an Asteroids-esque game for the Apple II computer, to Broderbund, my favourite games company. They rejected it, but took my next effort, Karateka, a side-scrolling beat-’em-up

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The Guide #224: Bondage Bronte, to more comeback tours – what will be 2026’s big cultural hitters ?

Welcome to 2026! I hope you are enjoying the final dribblings of the festive break, before reality bites on Monday. As is now tradition (well, we did it once before), this first newsletter of the new year looks at some of the big questions we hope will be answered in the next 12 months, across film, TV, music and games. Hopefully it will double up as a decent primer for the year ahead too, though for a more exhaustive rundown check the Guardian’s 2026 previews for film, music, TV, gaming, stage and art. Right, let’s get on with it:A storyline likely to rumble on through the year is the proposed purchase of Warner Bros by Netflix, which will require government approval (certainly not a given), not to mention all manner of contractual fine-tuning, before that big red N gets stamped on Warners’ famous water tower. Just enough time then for Hollywood’s greatest wrangler of spectacle, and newly installed head of the Director’s Guild, Christopher Nolan to demonstrate the value to Netflix of putting mass-market movies on the biggest screens possible

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My cultural awakening: I May Destroy You helped me confront being spiked

When I May Destroy You aired in the summer of 2020, I hadn’t yet been spiked. Michaela Coel’s comedy-drama, based on her own experience of sexual assault, follows Arabella (Coel) as she realises she was drugged and raped on a night out. With one in four women in Britain having experienced sexual violence, the 12-part series was a difficult watch for many. If not relatable, then confronting and familiar; something that had happened to others, but close enough to know that it could happen to you. Three months later, it did happen to me