Juventus sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli has claimed Chelsea made an offer to sign Dusan Vlahovic over the summer, but not one that they could deem acceptable. Romelu Lukaku was floated as a makeweight in negotiations.

Prominent YouTuber IShowSpeed recently issued a challenge to SypherPK for a 'Fortnite' 1v1 showdown during a livestream

Russian troops have lost “at least a brigade of troops” during their latest offensive in the ruined city of Avdiivka, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claiming they had suffered “painful losses”. This comes as news emerged that Putin’s troops had been executed for retreating from the offensive in the eastern city in Donetsk, according to the White House. “We have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told a media briefing on Thursday. Ukrainian forces have been repelling the Russian onslaught on the frontline in Donetsk for several weeks since mid-October. In a call to Rishi Sunak, Zelensky said: “The invaders made several attempts to surround Avdiivka, but each time our soldiers stopped them and threw them back, causing painful losses. In these cases, the enemy lost at least a brigade.” Meanwhile, Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesperson for Ukraine‘s southern groups of forces, said last week that Russian forces had suffered over 400 casualties a day in its campaign which has relied on small assault groups of 30 to 40 men. Read More A Russia without Putin? Be careful what you wish for... Moscow succession: What would happen if Putin dies? Russia is executing its own retreating soldiers as Ukraine offensive fails, says US

By Nia Williams REVELSTOKE, British Columbia Canada is sending armed forces to tackle fast-spreading wildfires in British Columbia,

By Sheila Dang X's new content moderation policy made it challenging to convince brands that the Elon Musk-owned

DUBLIN Ryanair on Monday posted a near record profit of 1.43 billion euros ($1.57 billion) in the year

What the papers say Manchester United have ended their interest in signing Harry Kane from Tottenham, The Guardian reports. The Spurs’ asking price for the 29-year-old was unrealistic, the Red Devils felt, despite Erik ten Hag making the England striker his primary summer target. Also in the Guardian is talk that Arsenal have emerged as strong contenders to sign Kai Havertz from Chelsea. The 24-year-old has also been identified as a target for Real Madrid. The forward’s contract expires in 2025 but he has told the club of his desire to leave this summer. Newcastle United are pushing hard to complete a deal to sign Inter Milan’s midfielder Nicolo Barella in a deal thought to be worth around £50 million, the Daily Telegraph says. The 26-year-old and Leicester City’s James Maddison are the Magpies’ two main targets. And the Mail writes that Manchester City will resist loan offers for midfielder James McAtee as Pep Guardiola wants him to be part of his treble-winning squad next season. The 20-year-old has been earmarked for the club’s senior side. Social media round-up Players to watch Dusan Vlahovic: Gazzetta dello Sport reports via Football Italia that Juventus want at least 80m euros (£68m) for the 23-year-old but Chelsea have told the Italians they can pick between five players in a swap deal for the Serbia striker. Kalidou Koulibaly: Italian outlet Corriere dello Sport says the 31-year-old Chelsea defender is also wanted by Inter Milan.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a meeting with computer chip makers has stressed that investment and international exchanges to strengthen the supply chain were welcome

Manny Machado homered into the second deck in left field in the fourth inning and then hit a go-ahead, two-run single in the seven-run eighth inning for the San Diego Padres, who beat NL West-leading Los Angeles 8-3 to snap a six-game losing streak to the Dodgers

Fabinho reacts to Liverpool signing midfield duo Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai.

Harry Maguire speaks about the collapse of a proposed summer transfer to West Ham from Man Utd.

Reddit users have hijacked a collaborative experiment launched by the company within minutes of its launch. The third edition of Reddit Place – a 1-million-pixel online canvas that allows any user to choose the colour of an individual pixel – launched on Thursday amid ongoing protests against the platform’s management. Communities, or sub-Reddits, quickly organised to post explicit messages aimed at Reddit’s chief executive on various sections of the canvas. In the centre of r/Place, a giant sign appeared within minutes reading, “Fuck Spez”, referring to Reddit CEO Steve ‘Spez’ Huffman. Other sections included graffiti scrawled with the same message, while another featured the text “Never forget what was stolen from us” – referring to the third-party apps that shut down in the wake of API changes to the site. Reddit was forced to push back the experiment several times in efforts to avoid coinciding with the worst of the protests, which at one stage saw thousands of high profile sub-Reddits go dark. Reddit acknowledged the timing of the latest social experiment, adding the tagline: “Right place, wrong time.” The Independent has reached out to Reddit for further comment on the latest protests. Reddit Place is set to continue for the next four days, allowing users to contribute to its evolving creation. Previous editions featured flags, cartoon characters, popular memes and even works of art. One nihilistic group called The Black Void was able to take over vast swathes of the 2017 Reddit Place Canvas with black pixels. The original concept of Reddit Place was intended to “enable humans to communicate and collaborate in ways they have never been able to before”, according to creator Josh Wardle, who went on to create the popular word game Wordle. “My hope is that the success and collaborative nature of projects like Place will encourage other internet companies to take some more risks when exploring ways that their users can interact,” he said at the time. Read More The Reddit blackout, explained: Why thousands of subreddits are protesting third-party app charges Reddit CEO tells employees ‘this will pass’ in response to major chaos at site Netflix kills its cheapest plan without ads Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is going much better than people expected Stolen ChatGPT accounts for sale on the dark web