Channel tunnel power outage disrupts thousands of journeys

A power outage in the Channel tunnel has disrupted thousands of journeys ahead of the new year celebrations, with all passenger and vehicle trains suspended for several hours while engineers raced to repair the fault.As Eurostar foot passenger departures for the continent were first delayed, then cancelled, the halls of St Pancras International station in London filled with stranded travellers awaiting updates. At Folkestone in Kent, tailbacks formed as drivers hoping to catch the shuttle faced seven-hour delays.By Tuesday evening, engineers were still struggling to restore full service, with the Channel tunnel operator, Getlink, saying trains were running on only one of the tunnel’s two tracks, travelling in alternate directions.The technical glitch began on Monday night, according to Getlink, with “an incident related to the power supply to trains”

Eurostar disruption: Channel tunnel partially reopens but ‘significant’ delays ongoing – as it happened

With the rest of the evening’s trains leaving their stations again, we’ll draw our live coverage to a close.Eurostar and LeShuttle services between the UK and Europe were suspended for most of Tuesday due to a power supply problem in the Channel tunnelThe timing of the power failure was terrible given it came the day before New Year’s Eve, with many travelling to end-of-year holiday destinations.A LeShuttle train which stopped in the tunnel was also to blame for the delaysTravellers scrambled to find other transport and accommodation options after all Eurostar services were postponed between London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.Some trains in Europe not using the Channel crossing – e.g

Snap decisions: why crowding into a photo booth with friends is still a magical experience | Nova Weetman

Last New Year’s Eve, I was out with a friend. We had no plans, so we met at a local cinema and then wandered the long street between our houses, pausing for a drink or two in various bars and chatting to strangers doing the same. We stopped when we became hungry and shared a plate of curries and drank beer in the window of an Indian restaurant, watching the parade of partygoers outside. Then we walked to the top of the hill to watch the fireworks lighting up the sky.It was after midnight as we strolled back but we weren’t quite ready to call it a night, and we found ourselves in a games arcade where a bunch of women were cramming into a photo booth to take a strip of black-and-white photos together

We still don’t really know what Elon Musk’s Doge actually did

When Elon Musk vowed late last year to lead a “department of government efficiency” (Doge), he claimed it would operate with “maximum transparency” as it set about saving $2tn worth of waste and exposing massive fraud.Today, with Musk out of the White House, Doge having cut only a tiny fraction of the waste it promised, and dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy and transparency laws, much of what the agency has done remains a mystery.The effects of Doge’s initial blitz through the federal government – which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse – are still playing out. Contrary to Musk’s promises, Doge’s success is vague and tough to quantify. Measuring the full impact and determining whether the agency even exists as a centralized entity anymore is difficult, complicated by an ongoing effort from the government to block disclosure of documents, which is itself a symptom of the chaos that the department created

‘Stay strong, champion’: boxing world offers condolences to Anthony Joshua

Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk have passed their condolences to the families of Sina Ghami and Latif Ayodele, the two friends who died in a car crash in Nigeria on Monday in which the former heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua was also injured.Ayodele, also known as Latz, was a personal trainer of Joshua, while Ghami acted as strength and conditioning coach for the 36-year-old boxer. Joshua remains in hospital in Lagos, where he was described by his management team as being in a stable condition.Fury, who had been expected to come out of retirement to fight Joshua next year, posted a tribute to Ghami and Ayodele on social media yesterday, writing: “This is so sad. May God give them a good bed in heaven

McCullum must be held to account even if England end Ashes with another win | Barney Ronay

A 3-2 series scoreline may make it hard to change coach but you don’t reward a failure of planning because the players clawed a bit back when it was too lateThere’s a good origins-story-style video in the Sky Sports masterclass archive. Filmed at Edgbaston in 2016, it shows the blue-sky brothers, Brendon McCullum and Rob Key, back when the world was still young, looking sharp and chiselled, laughing and joshing on the outfield, and nominally discussing how to bat in T20 cricket.And yes, the chemistry, well, the chemistry is overpowering. It almost feels like a romantic intrusion, the viewer cast as gooseberry. This is Coldplay kiss-cam energy