• Sacked managers and released players gain protection

• Employment Rights Act changes happen in January

Premier League and EFL clubs will be more vulnerable to unfair dismissal claims from sacked managers and released players from next year after changes to employment law. Under the Employment Rights Act (ERA), which comes into effect on 1 January, employees will gain protection from unfair dismissal after six months rather than two years of service.

In another significant change, the cap on compensation awards at employment tribunals of £118,223 will be removed, giving dismissed managers and players a far greater incentive to bring a claim.

Three years ago Luvo Manyonga knew he must change his life or die. In Poland this week, the former world champion makes an extraordinary return to athletics’ top table

Sprawled prone in the dirt, the cold metal of a baseball bat cracking against his skull, spine and down to the legs that had once propelled him to glory, Luvo Manyonga experienced an epiphany. This existence could not continue; he must change his life or die.

Manyonga had been a drug addict for as long as he could remember, seeking recreational highs that provided the opposite of the performance-enhancing shortcuts that some of his deceitful athletics rivals might have pursued.

Chantelle would like Hugo to show more affection when they are out. You decide who is being touchy
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Friends and family have noticed that we don’t hold hands and it’s become a running joke

I find holding hands annoying. Besides, I’m quite caring and I tell her I love her on a daily basis

Inclusion of first Black woman in US to write a symphony in Vienna’s New Year’s Day Concert was a long overdue recognition. But how much of her music was actually played?

The first of January feels a long time ago. But barely 10 weeks have passed since conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin brought in 2026 with the Vienna Philharmonic in its New Year’s Day Concert. On the programme was one piece which symbolised that even this ultra-traditionalist event was beginning to open up its repertoire. Instead of the Strauss and more Strauss that has defined the New Year’s Day programmes for many decades, there was music by Florence Price on the lineup. Price is a composer Nézet-Séguin has done more to champion than any other conductor of a major US orchestra, putting music by the first Black woman in the US to write a symphony at the centre of his discography.

Yet the Rainbow Waltz that is credited to Price on Sony’s album of the concert isn’t actually a piece by Price. Wolfgang Dörner’s supposed “arrangement” of Price’s original music for solo piano has been called by the Price expert John Michael Cooper – who has edited and published more of Price’s work than any other musicologist – the “sincerest form of insult” to Price and her music, labelling the work a “forgery”.

The advent of the steam age ushered in a great social revolution, but as Maciej Drygas’s film points out, the technology also took us off the rails

Like Koyaanisqatsi with an Interrail pass, this often-fascinating documentary – constructed entirely of archival footage, with no voiceover – surveys the sweeping 20th-century changes ushered in by steam trains: a great acceleration of modern society that transformed logistics and leisure, from travel for the masses to war mobilisation, introducing new consumer opportunities and abrupt psychocultural disruptions.

As per the 1920s flappers gazing brightly out of the window early on, director Maciej Drygas acknowledges the liberation and optimism offered by the locomotive. But prefaced by a Kafka quote – “There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope … But not for us” – his proposition seems to be that the technology led us quickly off the rails. The glowering initial sequence, of a steam engine being assembled, is like watching ancient cultists assemble a great Molochian idol. All too soon, newly forged shell casings, to be fired from railroad howitzers, give off unholy light in the black-and-white footage. Full speed to hell.

To understand this you need to know about swap rates and the impact of the war in Iran

On 16 January, the average rate on a new two-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.78%, according to the financial data company Moneyfacts . Two months later, it was 5.20%. Between those two dates, the Bank of England voted to keep the base rate at 3.75%. More significantly, though, the US and Israel carried out airstrikes on Iran and a conflict broke out.

The US air attacks on Iran have caused economic shocks across the world. Stock markets have tumbled, petrol and heating oil prices have gone up and there have been warnings of higher bills to come, for everything from food to holidays . All of this feeds into interest rate expectations, and from there into mortgage rates.

Ireland’s former taoiseach warns of conservative Russian influence and says US is now ‘off the pitch’ under Trump

LGBTQ+ rights in Europe are caught in a “chill wind” from east and west as Vladimir Putin’s Russia exports its conservative agenda and the “Americans are off the pitch” under Donald Trump, Ireland’s former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Varadkar, who in 2017 became Ireland’s first out gay prime minister, said Europe needed to “step up” to avoid the continent becoming further squeezed by global forces seeking to chip away at recent progress.

Move will put national security and lives overseas at risk, critics say, as overall UK aid budget is slashed to 0.3% of gross national income

Climate aid to developing countries from the UK will be cut by about 14% to roughly £2bn a year under government plans, in a move critics said would put national security and lives overseas at risk.

The move follows bitter rows with the Treasury, which wanted deeper cuts owing to pressure on spending resulting from the war in Iran.

In a new exhibition, the featured images reflect Britain’s attempts to classify and curb the subcontinent’s population, but they also demonstrate the nobility of their subjects – and the futility of the task

At first, and without the context, someone looking at this collection of 150-year-old photographs of Indian men and women might think they were looking at compelling portraits. The faces are of individuals with piercing eyes and a striking presence.

But context changes everything. The images were taken by British colonialists as part of a great project of photographic ethnography, intended to classify and categorise their subjects.

Untitled (Indian family in Singapore), late-19th century, GR Lambert & Co