FedEx plane catches fire after bird strike in New Jersey, makes emergency landing

Cargo aircraft caught fire after striking bird shortly after departure from Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday morning

A FedEx cargo airplane caught on fire after striking a bird shortly after the plane’s departure from Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday morning, according to officials.

There were no injuries reported onboard, and the plane made an emergency return to Newark Liberty international airport.

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McCullum considers three England captains to revive white-ball form

  • Head coach ponders different Test, ODI and T20 captains
  • McCullum may look to domestic game for new leader

Brendon McCullum is open to the concept of three England men’s captains – and possibly even appointing one from outside the current setup – as he attempts to revive the white-ball teams and ensure a winter of misery does not bleed into the Test side.

Signing off from the Champions Trophy with a seven-wicket shellacking at the hands of South Africa – a seventh successive one-day-international defeat – McCullum admitted England were poor in “all facets of the game” and lessons needed to be learned. His review will also mean identifying a successor to Jos Buttler as white-ball captain.

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The week in audio: Lucky Boy; Moorgate; Thirty Eulogies; Harford: An Oral History and more – review

Past traumas processed through investigative journalism and drama; a truly moving and surprising documentary; laugh-out-loud indie comedy; and Lauren Laverne’s return

Lucky Boy (Tortoise Media)
Moorgate (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)
Thirty Eulogies (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)
Harford: An Oral History (Dan Hooper)
Lauren Laverne (Radio 6 Music/BBC Sounds)

“In that summer, it was me and her against the world. We were powerful, right?” On Tortoise Media’s new four-part podcast, Lucky Boy, Gareth (not his real name) is remembering his first love. He was 14 then, bright but a “misfit”, having a secret relationship. She was 27 and a teacher. Lucky Boy is how Gareth thought of himself at the time; nearly 40 years later, he thinks the opposite.

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Continue ReadingThe week in audio: Lucky Boy; Moorgate; Thirty Eulogies; Harford: An Oral History and more – review

Trump’s style of petty domination was in full display with Zelenskyy | Moira Donegan

Trump and Vance, I think, never really intended to have a conversation with Zelenskky. Instead, they wanted to look tough on TV

The last time Donald Trump did this, it was in secret, and he got impeached over it. In 2019, Donald Trump, on a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanded that the Ukrainian president produce – or fabricate – evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, the son of Trump’s eventual opponent in the 2020 election, in exchange for continued US military aide.

At the time, Russia had already seized control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and was funding violent insurgent groups in the country’s east; it was increasingly clear that a full-scale Russian invasion was coming, as it finally did in 2022. Since the end of second world war, it has been America that checks Russian expansionist ambitions in Europe – America that provided the backstop to the Nato alliance, America that secured the independence of eastern Europe. Trump wanted to condition that longstanding role on Zelenskyy doing him a personal political favor. The international order could be ended, he suggested, if those who depended on him didn’t do enough to indulge his vanity, self-interest and impulsive whims.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

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Goalkeepers to be punished with corner for holding ball more than eight seconds

  • Ifab announces law change for next season
  • ‘It could be one of those very effective deterrents’

Goalkeepers who waste time by holding on to the ball are to be penalised with the award of a corner, the law-making International Football Association Board (Ifab) has confirmed.

The new law, which will be introduced this summer, will mean goalkeepers have eight seconds to claim and redistribute the ball before they are penalised, with the referee giving a five-second countdown to warn them of incoming punishment. This will replace the current system whereby a keeper has six seconds to move the ball on and is punished with an indirect free-kick if they do not.

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Castles in the sky: the fantastical drawings of author Victor Hugo – in pictures

Although better known for his sprawling Romantic novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, celebrated French author Victor Hugo spent much of his time drawing. A collection of about 70 of his sketches will soon be on display at the Royal Academy in London, in an exhibition bringing together caricatures, travel drawings and landscapes. Several of the drawings feature castles and ruins. “Hugo was inspired by ‘burgs’ – castles, fortresses or walled towns – that he saw when travelling along the Rhine, but he often drew fantastical castles that fuse memory and imagination,” says the exhibition’s curator Sarah Lea. “Hugo’s castle drawings range in tone from sinister and sublime to highly romantic and exquisitely detailed.”

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Continue ReadingCastles in the sky: the fantastical drawings of author Victor Hugo – in pictures