Arsenal have been drawn against Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, while Manchester City will play 14-time winners Real Madrid.

The Gunners will host German side Bayern, who have England captain Harry Kane in their squad, at Emirates Stadium in the first leg.

Meanwhile, this is the third successive season City, who won last year's title, have met Real in the knockout stages.

The first legs take place 9-10 April, with the second legs on 16-17 April.

If Arsenal and City win their ties the two Premier League clubs will face each other in the semi-finals.

In the other ties, five-time winners Barcelona will play French champions Paris St-Germain, while Atletico Madrid, who are fourth in La Liga, host German opposition Borussia Dortmund.

The semi-finals will be held on 30 April and 1 May, with the second legs a week later on 7-8 May.

Wembley Stadium will host this year's final on Saturday, 1 June.

1917 – Russian Revolution: Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.

An Australian farm has smashed the record for the world's largest blueberry with a fruit the size of a ping-pong ball.

Picked in November and stashed in a freezer since, the monster was almost 4cm wide and weighed in at 20.4g - about 10 times the average blueberry.

The title was previously held by a 16.2g berry grown in Western Australia.

The specimen is of a new variety developed by the Costa Group, to meet consumer demands for larger berries.

Brad Hocking says the Eterna breed consistently yields huge fruit, but recent growing conditions had sparked a bumper crop at their farm in Corindi in northern New South Wales.

His team had noticed some promising berries on the trees but were shocked and "stoked" when they were weighed.

"It wasn't really until we put them on the scale that we realised what we found," the lead horticulturalist told the BBC.

"The record-breaking fruit was obviously particularly large, but we would have picked 20 or more fruit on that morning that would have broken the previous world record."

After 12 weeks, the berry was this week certified by Guinness World Records as the heaviest ever documented.

WrestleMania XX was the 20th annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It featured professional wrestlers from both of the promotion's two brand divisions – Raw and SmackDown!. The event took place on March 14, 2004, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was the third WrestleMania at Madison Square Garden (after WrestleMania I in 1985 and WrestleMania X in 1994) and the fourth of six WrestleManias in the New York metropolitan area (alongside WrestleMania I, 2, X, 29, and 35). To this date it is the last WrestleMania to have been held at the Garden. Its calendar date of March 14 also stands as the earliest that WrestleMania has ever been held in any year.

The match card featured two main events. The pay-per-view main event, which was also the main match for the Raw brand, was a triple threat match for the World Heavyweight Championship, which saw champion Triple H defending the world title against Shawn Michaels, and that year's Royal Rumble match winner, Chris Benoit. Benoit won the match, making Triple H submit via the Crippler Crossface, resulting in his first and only world championship in the WWE. The main match for the SmackDown! brand featured Eddie Guerrero versus Kurt Angle for the WWE Championship, which Guerrero won by pinfall.

Comment deleted by Article Creator

Derek Thompson will bow out of BBC One drama Casualty on Saturday night after 38 years in the role of Charlie Fairhead.

The Belfast-born actor, 75, is the medical drama's longest-serving cast member and the only remaining character from the first episode in 1986.

Thompson, who has acted in nearly 900 episodes of Casualty, announced he was leaving the show last May, saying: "The time has come for me to hang up Charlie's scrubs."

He added that his time on the show, as the senior charge nurse, had been "wonderful".

Casualty is set in the fictional Holby City Hospital and tells the stories of the staff and patients of the hospital's A&E Department.

He had a will-they-won't-they relationship with fellow nurse Duffy, played by Cathy Shipton, which spanned 30 years.

The original cast of Casualty included Bernard Gallagher, George Harris, Brenda Fricker and Julia Watson, alongside Thompson.

Thompson is the only actor who has remained a constant presence throughout the series' history.

Fans will not have to wait too long to see him back on screen, however.

The BBC recently announced that Thompson is to appear in a guest role in the second series of the Belfast-based drama Blue Lights, playing retired police officer Robin Graham.

Casualty will be broadcast at 21.25 GMT on Saturday on BBC One.

Two people are in hospital after being attacked by a bear in the Slovak town of Liptovský Mikuláš, emergency services said.

A 49-year-old woman suffered an injury to her shoulder, while a 72-year-old man was treated for a gash on his head, officials confirmed.

Reports said police went on to drive the bear out of town and into a forest.

Videos posted on social media showed the bear bounding along a road, and in one, lunging at a man on the pavement.

The news comes a day after a 31-year-old Belarussian woman apparently fell to her death trying to escape a brown bear in the nearby Low Tatra mountains.

She had been walking with a male companion through an area of thick forest and steep ravines when they were set upon by the bear.

According to the man, he and the woman fled in different directions. Her body was later discovered by a search dog shortly after he called for help.

There have been a number of bear attacks in Slovakia in recent years including one fatal attack in 2021, reported at the time to be the first in Slovakia for a century.

Some members of Slovakia's populist-nationalist coalition have called for looser protection for bears so the rising numbers can be regulated by hunting.

The Environment Ministry said that together with Romania it would present a proposal at the next EU Council of environment ministers to reclassify bears on the protected species list, as their numbers mean they are no longer endangered and can be selectively culled.

Researchers however say there has been no explosion in Slovakia's estimated bear population, which they say remains stable at around 1,275.

comment by Willie Dyer (U1734)
posted 3 hours, 56 minutes ago

It is learned behaviour. You can't just eliminate it, just like that. It can only be taken out of the game gradually, like quitting smoking.

What we need to do, instead of just trying to ban tragedy chanting altogether, is to ease the fans out of tragedy chanting like a turtle sitting in cold water on a stove.

A good way to do this is to gradually introduce tragedy chants that are increasingly less severe and relevant. We could move on to things like 9/11 and Titanic for example which are still pretty big but not as relevant to the club. "She sinks when she wants, she sinks when she waaants, RMS Titanic, she sinks when she wants". Just some good examples.

Then once we have moved away from the more serious tragedy chants, we can ease down to chants about someone breaking a finger nail or such and our fans won't have noticed because we have eased them into it instead of completely banning tragedy chanting, immediately.

I am sure the club are already onto this as the club knows the club better than I do, but we really need to make some progress.

-----

1912 Reference

1912

On the 15th anniversary of Claudia Lawrence's disappearance, police have asked anyone with information to get in touch and end her family's "pain".

The chef, who was 35 at the time, failed to arrive for work at the University of York on 18 March 2009.

Police believe she was murdered, although her body has never been found and no charges have ever been brought.

Wayne Fox, from North Yorkshire Police, said "silence" was the only barrier to solving Ms Lawrence's disappearance.

On the day she went missing, she was last seen at about 15:05 GMT as she walked towards her home on Heworth Road, in York.

Ms Lawrence's disappearance prompted the biggest and most complex missing person inquiry in the history of North Yorkshire Police.

Singling out Claudia's mother, Joan, and her father, Peter, Mr Fox, senior investigating officer from North Yorkshire Police, said: "For such pain and despair to continue for 15 years without knowing where your child is, or what happened to them, that is far beyond what any mum or dad should ever have to live with."

"Joan has lived with unending uncertainty and trauma since the last conversation she had with Claudia on the telephone on the evening of 18 March 2009," he added.

"I also think about Claudia's dad, Peter, who tragically passed away three years ago without ever knowing what happened to his daughter."

Before his death in 2021, Mr Lawrence had campaigned for the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill, also known as Claudia's Law, which was passed in April 2017 and came into force two years later.

In 2018, he was appointed an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his campaigning over his daughter's disappearance.

San Marino: 'The ultimate dream' - world's worst national football team chase first win for 20 years

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67236539

Vladimir Putin is proclaimed winner of the Russian presidential election, securing a fifth term.

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Former Luton Town and England goalkeeper Ron Baynham has died at the age of 94.

Baynham made 434 appearances for the Hatters, arriving in 1951 and playing his last game for them in 1965.

He earned three international caps and Luton Town said he was England's oldest surviving international player at the time of his death.

He was always greeted with warm applause when he visited Kenilworth Road in later life, the club said.

"He had been back several times since, where his appearances on the pitch at half-time were met with rapturous applause, despite him saying that no-one would remember him," said Luton Town historian Roger Wash, who has written an obituary for the club's website.

Born in Birmingham in 1929, Baynham fell in love with cricket as a child.

He was introduced to football when his brother formed a team and "dumped" Baynham in goal, thinking that was the best place for him - wrote Mr Wash.

Baynham was offered a trial with Wolverhampton Wanderers after being spotted by a scout, but he turned it down.

He joined Worcester City instead and, two years later, he was offered another trial, this time at Kenilworth Road where he signed on in exchange for £1,000.

The Hatters won promotion to Division One in 1955 and Baynham flew to Copenhagen that same year, where he helped England thrash Denmark 5-1.

He was capped twice more, against Northern Ireland and Spain.

The year 1959 saw Luton face Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup final. It was the pinnacle of Baynham's playing career, but a bittersweet moment.

According to the club, Baynham described it as the "biggest disappointment" of his career and added: "Sadly, the team that day did not play like the team I knew."

In September 1960, he fractured his skull during a home game against Sheffield United but recovered well enough to carry on playing.

His final appearance in goal came in a reserve game in 1965 when he was forced to play despite a serious pelvic injury.

Mr Wash remembered him at the club's FA Cup final 40th anniversary celebrations in 1999 and said he "proved the life and soul of the party".

Baynham worked as a painter and decorator, as well as at Luton Airport, before retiring to live in Silsoe, Bedfordshire.

Hong Kong has passed a tough security law which authorities say is necessary for stability, but which critics fear will further erode civil liberties.

Article 23 targets new offences like external interference and insurrection, and penalties include life sentences.

It was fast-tracked through its final stage by the city's pro-Beijing parliament in less than two weeks.

Article 23 expands on a controversial national security law (NSL) earlier imposed by China.

That law already criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong.

But Hong Kong's leader John Lee has said Article 23 is also necessary to guard against "potential sabotage and undercurrents that try to create troubles" particularly "ideas of an independent Hong Kong".

China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said swift enactment of the new legislation would protect "core national interests" and allow Hong Kong to focus on economic development.

Great Britain will meet Canada, Finland and Argentina in the Davis Cup Finals group stage in Manchester in September.

The top two teams from each of the four groups qualify for the knockout stage of the Finals in Malaga in November.

The toughest group appears to be in Valencia, where Spain will take on Australia, France and the Czech Republic.

Defending champions Italy face the Netherlands, Belgium and Brazil in Bologna.

Germany, the USA, Slovakia and Chile will feature in the group being staged in Zhuhai.

The city was chosen to host it even though China are not involved.

It will mean a long flight from New York for some of the players, as the group stage begins just two days after the conclusion of the US Open.

Birmingham City are poised to bring back popular former manager Gary Rowett as interim boss until the end of the season in a bid to end their alarming run of Championship results.

The 50-year-old, who has been doing media work since leaving Millwall in October, is in line to take charge in the continued absence of Tony Mowbray.

Assistant Mark Venus has stood in since Mowbray stepped away on 19 February.

But Blues have picked up just one point in the six Championship matches since.

That has left the US-owned club on the edge of the relegation zone with eight games left this season, kept out of the bottom three only on goal difference.

Mowbray is undergoing medical treatment for an unnamed illness, with the club saying he would be absent for "approximately six to eight weeks".

Former Blues player and manager Rowett is set to return to the club for a third time and could therefore become the sixth different man to pick a team this season, following John Eustace, Wayne Rooney, caretaker Steve Spooner, Mowbray and Venus.

He was sacked by Blues' previous owners in December 2016 when Blues were seventh in the Championship, kept out of the play-off zone only on goal difference.

Birmingham's next game is after the international break against QPR on Friday, 29 March.

Blues are the longest surviving club in the Championship, in their 13th straight season in the second tier following relegation from the Premier League in 2011.

They were most recently in the third tier in 1995, before being promoted under Barry Fry.

Super Metroid is a 1994 action-adventure game developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the third installment in the Metroid series, following the events of the Game Boy game Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991). Players control bounty hunter Samus Aran, who travels to planet Zebes to retrieve an infant Metroid creature stolen by the Space Pirate leader Ridley.

Following the established gameplay model of its predecessors, Super Metroid focuses on exploration, with the player searching for power-ups used to reach previously inaccessible areas. It introduced new concepts to the series, such as the inventory screen, an automap, and the ability to fire in all directions. The development staff from previous Metroid games—including Yoshio Sakamoto, Makoto Kano and Gunpei Yokoi—returned to develop Super Metroid over the course of two years. The developers wanted to make a true action game, and set the stage for Samus's reappearance.

Super Metroid received acclaim, with praise for its atmosphere, gameplay, music and graphics. It is often cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. The game sold well and shipped 1.42 million copies worldwide by late 2003. Alongside Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid is credited for establishing the "Metroidvania" genre, inspiring numerous indie games and developers. It also became popular among players for speedrunning. Super Metroid was followed in 2002 by Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. It has been re-released on several Nintendo consoles and services.

First released on March 19, 1994 in Japan.