A British man who drove his car into a crowd of football fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League title, injuring more than 130 people, has been sentenced to 21 and a half years in prison. In sentencing 54-year-old Paul Doyle, the judge said the attack was deliberate, describing how Doyle repeatedly accelerated into the crowd.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has suggested that the United States military’s attacks on alleged drug boats around Latin America aim to ultimately topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
In comments published by Vanity Fair magazine on Tuesday, Wiles appeared to contradict the Donald Trump administration’s stated rationale behind the bombing campaign – combating drugs.
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“He [Trump] wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will,” Wiles was quoted as saying.
Vanity Fair released a lengthy profile on Wiles on Tuesday, hours after the Pentagon announced three more boat strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that it said killed eight people.
“So not a war on the cartels. It’s regime change,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on X in response to Wiles’s comments. “Either way, totally illegal and nonsensical.”
The US administration has been intensifying attacks on vessels as it ramps up its military presence near Venezuela, raising speculations that Washington may be plotting another regime change war against Maduro’s left-wing government.
Trump has repeatedly asserted over the past months that the Venezuelan president’s “days are numbered”.
Last week, US forces raided and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a move that Caracas denounced as “international piracy”.
Trump – who recently pardoned the right-wing former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drug trafficker – has portrayed the boat strikes and the push against Maduro as an anti-narcotics campaign.
Legal experts say the targeting of vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and Pacific – which has killed more than 90 people – likely violates US and international law and amounts to extrajudicial executions.
The Pentagon has only provided grainy footage as evidence that the boats it has targeted were carrying drugs, while describing the victims as “narco-terrorists”.
The US has been designating drug-trafficking organisations as “terrorist” groups, but UN experts have rejected that label as justification for the deadly bombardment.
“These attacks do not appear to have been conducted within the context of national self-defence, an international or non-international armed conflict, nor against individuals posing an imminent threat to life, thus violating fundamental international human rights law prohibiting arbitrary deprivation of life,” the experts said in a report last month.
“Unprovoked attacks and killings on international waters also violate international maritime laws.”
In October, Trump joked that people are no longer going fishing near the Venezuelan coast due to the US attacks.
Washington has had tense relations with Caracas since the rise of Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s late predecessor, in the early 2000s. The oil-rich South American country has been under heavy US sanctions for years.
Trump, who received the newly established FIFA Peace Prize earlier this month, has campaigned against more US wars and portrayed himself as a peace president.
But his administration has been escalating against Venezuela and issuing threats to Colombia, which is led by another left-wing government under President Gustavo Petro.
The US president has refused to rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela. He has also declared the country’s airspace closed “in its entirety”.
Last week, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy, emphasising the need to establish US “preeminence” in the Americas.
Maduro has accused the US of creating a “pretext” for war, expressing openness to diplomacy with Washington while rejecting what he called a “slave’s peace”.
YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul is back in action on Friday night when he faces the biggest test of his career against two-time unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
Joshua will start as the huge favourite in this one, despite not having fought for more than a year and after taking a break from boxing.
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For Paul, this bout – more than the rest of his previous fights combined – will go a long way to convincing supporters and sceptics alike whether the brash-talking social media star is a genuine world-class contender or nothing more than an overhyped pretender.
Here’s what you need to know in advance of Paul vs Joshua:
The fight is scheduled for Friday, December 19.
Paul and Joshua are expected to undertake their ring walks at 10:30pm local time (03:30 GMT Saturday). The fight will begin shortly thereafter.
The heavyweight contest will be staged at the Kaseya Center in Miami, United States.
The venue is home to the three-time National Basketball Association (NBA) champion Miami Heat and can hold up to 20,000 spectators for boxing matches.
Al Jazeera’s live text commentary and photo coverage of the fight night will begin at 23:30 GMT on Friday, December 19. We will bring you all the pre-fight talking points, analysis and build-up before bringing you round-by-round Paul-Joshua updates live.
This whole fight card will be available live worldwide exclusively on Netflix. All Netflix subscribers can stream the event at no extra cost.
Joshua has a substantial height and weight advantage – and his professional fighting resume is far superior – making the Briton the overwhelming bookie’s favourite to win the fight.
Odds via FanDuel (subject to change) offer the following money lines, suggesting a Joshua win as a near-certainty:
Jake Paul to win: +700
Anthony Joshua: -1300
Figures vary, but it appears both fighters are in for the largest payday of their careers.
It was initially reported that Paul and Joshua would evenly split a whopping $184m fight purse.
Paul has since claimed on social media that the fight will actually be worth a staggering $267m, but has provided no evidence to back up that inflated figure.
It will be Joshua’s first bout since a brutal fifth-round knockout loss against fellow Englishman Daniel Dubois in September 2024.
In the past 14 months, the 36-year-old Joshua also underwent elbow surgery and took time off the sport to recover and recharge mentally and physically.
Paul’s November 14 exhibition boxing match against WBA world lightweight champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis was scrapped on November 4 after it emerged that a civil lawsuit had been filed against Davis in Miami-Dade County in late October.
The scheduled fight had drawn significant global interest due to the novelty of the matchup that pitted the much-larger Paul against Davis, who fights at the 135-pound (61kg) weight limit.
Paul, 28, is from Westlake, Ohio where he and his older brother Logan shot to fame through social media. Jake began his career posting videos on the online platform Vine in September 2013 and had amassed 5.3 million followers and 2 billion views before the app was discontinued, according to reports.
Paul is 6-feet, 1-inch tall (1.85m) and normally fights at the cruiserweight – or junior heavyweight – division. The weight class limit for the division is listed at 200 pounds (91kg).
The American enters this fight off the back of his last successful bout against former world middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in June, which he won by unanimous decision.
Before that, he shot to worldwide fame in November 2024 when he prevailed in a decision victory over legendary heavyweight Mike Tyson, who was 58 at the time and was a shadow of his former self.
Anthony Joshua is a 6-feet, 6-inch tall (1.98m) boxer from Watford, just outside London, England.
Under the parameters of the bout, Joshua, who historically has weighed in at about 250 pounds (113kg) for past heavyweight fights, will be limited to no more than 245 pounds (111kg) against Paul.
Joshua is a two-time unified heavyweight world champion. He held the unified titles (WBA, IBF, WBO) at the following time periods: April 2016 to June 2019, when he won the IBF belt and unified it, losing them to Andy Ruiz Jr; and again from December 2019 to September 2021, after winning the rematch against Ruiz Jr. before losing to current heavyweight world champion, Oleksandr Usyk.
Paul began professional bouts in 2020, and his pro fight record is 12-1.
His only loss came in February 2023, when he lost to Tommy Fury, the brother of former heavyweight world champion Tyson.
The 36-year-old’s fight record is 28-4. Joshua has fought several famous heavyweights, including Usyk, Dubois and Wladimir Klitschko.
He is eight years older than Paul and has more than double the number of career professional fights than his opponent.
Paul has predicted the bout will end via a knockout victory in the fifth round.
“I’m here to go out there and shock the world,” Paul said. “I know what I’m capable of. People say, ‘Oh, he’s out of his mind.’ I’ve gotten to where I am today because of delusional optimism. No one thinks I’m going to win, so join the list and be ready to be shocked.”
“He’s one of the best heavyweights ever,” Paul added. “But I believe that fighting a smaller man is often times harder for a heavyweight because of the speed difference and because of the foot speed, because of the angles. All that power is great. I just have to avoid that one shot. I believe that I can do that. I know I can pick him apart and score points.”
Despite being the odds-on favourite for victory, Joshua says he is approaching the eight-round contest seriously.
“You can’t underestimate anyone. I’m going to take him seriously,” Joshua said. “After a year out, I’ve realigned a lot in my life. I got my focus back to where it needs to be.”
Joshua, who has 25 career KOs as a pro, acknowledged that anything short of a quick knockout win will be perceived as additional erosion of his standing among the elite heavyweights.
“I’ve seen it. I’ve heard it,” he added. “As I said to Jake respectfully, I need to cut him up. I need to break him up, and I need to hurt him. That’s just what we do.”
In the co-main event, it will be an all-North American women’s matchup with Alycia Baumgardner of the United States putting two of her three World super featherweight titles (IBF, WBO) on the line against Canadian challenger Leila Beaduoin.
Baumgardner, aka “The Bomb”, hasn’t been defeated since 2018 and will start as the strong favourite in the eighth title match of her professional career.
Beaduoin, who is riding a four-fight winning streak, will need to be at her all-time best to upset the champ on Friday.
Main card (From 8pm | 01:00 GMT on Saturday)
Preliminary card (From 4.45pm | 21:45 GMT on Friday)
Australia’s government is fending off political attacks from inside and outside the country after the Bondi massacre. Israeli leaders and interest groups have been condemned for trying to politicise the killings, as Soraya Lennie explains.
The United Kingdom is launching an independent investigation into foreign interference in British politics, just weeks after a former Reform UK lawmaker was jailed for more than 10 years for taking bribes to make pro-Russia statements.
Steve Reed, the UK’s secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, said on Tuesday that he had ordered the probe in response to the case of Nathan Gill, a former Member of the European Parliament and ex-leader of Reform UK in Wales.
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“A British politician took bribes to further the interests of the Russian regime,” Reed said in the House of Commons. “This conduct is a stain on our democracy. The independent review will work to remove that stain.”
Gill was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison on November 21.
He pleaded guilty in September to accepting thousands of euros from a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine between 2018 and 2019, and making scripted statements and television appearances at his behest.
The case had spurred widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum, with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party – which has been leading most polls – last month describing Gill’s actions as “reprehensible, treasonous and unforgivable”.
On Tuesday, Conservative MP Paul Holmes welcomed the independent review into foreign interference as a necessary step.
“Protecting the integrity of our democratic system from foreign interference is not a partisan issue. It goes to the heart of public trust in our elections,” Holmes told the House.
“Interference in our elections from foreign actors is something that we must all be vigilant against.”
Reed, the housing minister, said the independent probe would be led by Philip Rycroft, former UK permanent secretary for the Department for Exiting the European Union.
“The purpose of the review is to provide an in-depth assessment of the current financial rules and safeguards and make recommendations,” said Reed, adding that Rycroft has been asked to report his findings to the government by the end of March.
The minister noted that the British government put forward a strategy “for modern and secure elections” earlier this year in a push to address foreign interference and public distrust in the electoral system, among other issues.
But Reed said on Tuesday that “events have shown that we need to consider whether our firewall is enough”.
The world could lose thousands of glaciers each year over the coming decades unless global warming is curbed, leaving only a fraction remaining by the end of the century, scientists warn.
A scientific study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change warned that unless governments take action now, the planet could reach a stage of “peak glacier extinction” by midcentury with up to 4,000 melting each year.
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About 200,000 glaciers remain in the world, and about 750 disappear each year. That rate could rise more than fivefold if global temperatures soar by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels and accelerate global warming, according to the report, which predicted only 18,288 glaciers would remain by the end of the century.
Even if governments meet their pledges to limit warming to 1.5C (2.7F) under the Paris Agreement, the world could still end up losing 2,000 glaciers a year by 2041. At that pace, a little more than half of the planet’s glaciers would be gone by 2100.
That best case scenario appears unlikely. The United Nations Environment Programme already warned last month that warming is on track to exceed 1.5C in the next few years. It predicted that even if countries meet promises they have made in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3C to 2.5C (4.1F to 4.5F) by the end of the century.
Monday’s study was published at the close of the UN’s International Year of Glacier Preservation with the findings intended to “underscore the urgency of ambitious climate policy”.
“The difference between losing 2,000 and 4,000 glaciers per year by the middle of the century is determined by near-term policies and societal decisions taken today,” the study said.
Coauthor Matthias Huss, a glacier expert at ETH Zurich university, took part in 2019 in a symbolic funeral for the Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps.