The Guardian Articles

Ni, 61, holds court in Paris

You hear all sorts of whispers at the Olympics; my favourite this year was about the 61-year-old grandmother Ni Xialian, who had an outside shot in the women’s table tennis. She won world titles for China in the early 1980s, then fell in love …

There was a lot riding on the Paris Paralympics, but they delivered. A Games that had the challenge not only of exciting the people of Paris but of reviving the movement behind disability sport served up world-class entertainment to full stadiums and left a legacy of a more accessible French …

At the age of 47, diehard AC Milan fan Ninni Licata has hung up his football boots in exchange for a tennis racket.

Like thousands of Italians in recent years, Licata has been unable to resist the lure of a game that for years had been relegated to the sidelines …

Game of the week

Green Bay Packers (11-4) v Minnesota Vikings (13-2)

Batters have signature shots. That’s a given. Certain shapes or sequences of shapes that you associate with that player forever. The Ponting pull, the Lara follow-through over the shoulder, fill your own list. It’s much rarer for bowlers to have signature dismissals. There are so many ways to get players …

Magnus Carlsen, the global No 1, stars on Wall Street this weekend as the Norwegian, 34, defends his World Rapid and Blitz crowns in New York against a host of ambitious US and international challengers.

The field of 182 for the World Rapid/Blitz

includes 30 Americans

Good morning.

The global surge of authoritarian rule in recent years has been stark and alarming. Strongman leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have systematically consolidated power, while a new wave of autocratic rulers have emerged from Asia to South America.

This trend has only been further amplified by …

Ukraine is lobbying the UK government to give teenage refugees who fled the war-torn country the chance to study a GCSE in Ukrainian, amid reports they are instead being pressed to study Russian.

Ukraine’s education ministry has written to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, to say it is “crucial” to …

Details have emerged of a “terrifying” incident in which a crew member fell from yacht Porco Rosso and drifted for more than a kilometre before being rescued on a deadly night of racing, during which two sailors on other yachts were killed.

Two sailors on separate yachts, Flying Fish Arctos …

The delight and relief that swirled around Constitution Hill as he extended his unbeaten record to nine starts here on Thursday expressed itself in various ways. Nicky Henderson, his trainer, was teary, the punters who sent him off favourite were jubilant and Nico de Boinville, the winner’s jockey,