Punters have been pouring into the stadium and lapping up the booze ahead of what could be a wet and rainy gig.

Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen are bringing their circus-style tour back to Sunderland, complete with trapeze artists, balloons, and giant elephant in tow on the revival of their hit 2009 tour, which has already been branded the “greatest show in town”.

They are expected to treat fans to a set packed with their biggest hits, from Back for Good and Patience to more recent favourites, with a few new surprises also promised.

Drinks prices for the Take That concert have now been revealed.

A pint will set concertgoers back £7.50 for beer and cider, while wine and cocktail drinkers can be expected to pay about £7.95.

Sprits and Cocktails at Take That (Image: THE NORTHERN ECHO)

Beer and cider

• Madri / Carling cider – £7.50 a pint
• 2 pints – £15
• 3 pints – £22.50
• 4 pints – £30

Cans and wine

• Carling, 500ml, four percent ABV – £7.95
• Fruit / apple cider, 500ml, four percent, ABV – £7.95
• White / red wine, up to 12 per cent, ABV, 250ml – £7.95
• Rosé wine, 187ml – £7.95

Prosecco

• Prosecco, 125ml – £7.95
• Prosecco, 125ml – 2 for £15

Cocktails and mixed drinks

• Cocktail cans, 250ml, five percent, ABV – £7.95
• Cocktail cans – 2 for £15
• Blue spiced margarita, regular 285ml – £9
• Blue spiced margarita, large 455ml – £15
• Aperitivo spritz, regular 285ml – £9
• Aperitivo spritz, large 455ml – £15
• Vodka lemonade can, 250ml – £7.95
• Gin and tonic, large 250ml – £7.95

Soft drinks

• Water, 500ml – £2.95
• Coke- £3
• Fanta – £3
• Sprite – £3

WASHINGTON (AP) — Teddy Roosevelt boxed. Richard Nixon bowled.

Dwight D. Eisenhower put in a putting green. George H.W. Bush added a horseshoe pit. Herbert Hoover played a game named for himself to get more exercise, while George W. Bush threw open the space for youth T-ball.

The White House and its storied South Lawn are no strangers to sporting events. But they’ve never seen anything like the UFC show President Donald Trump is hosting to celebrate his 80th birthday on Sunday or the eight-sided, wire-mesh cage complete with an open overhead dome featuring large screens that are surrounded by thousands of arena seats.

Sometimes called America’s backyard, the South Lawn was until now known for low-contact sports and joyful events geared toward children or bipartisanship, like the annual Easter Egg Roll or the congressional picnic.

The same space being used for blood sport, feting a president who relishes it and playing out in a hulking structure featuring a complicated overhead lighting scheme known as The Claw, illustrates yet another of the White House norms that Trump is gleefully laying to rest — or, in UFC parlance, forcing to tap out.

That the president has begun suggesting that he could make the cage-fighting venue a permanent South Lawn fixture further underscores just how far from T-ball the White House has come.

“Sports has been central to presidents. I don’t know that it’s been quite the spectacle that it is with the Trump administration,” said Michael Patrick Cullinane, senior historian at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

Teddy Roosevelt pioneered sports at the White House

Many early presidents were talented athletes before taking office. Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft were celebrated young wrestlers. John Quincy Adams was fit enough to take daily naked swims in the Potomac River while in office.

But Teddy Roosevelt was the first to make sports a large part of White House life, installing a tennis court on the lawn. His wife, Edith, was concerned about his workload, and the grass court outside his office was meant to force more relaxation.

Cullinane, who is the author of “Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet” and is a history professor at Dickinson State University, said Roosevelt loved tennis and, though he didn’t play well, he did so “long and vigorously.”

Roosevelt would take the court daily at 3 p.m., rain or shine, for seemingly endless six-game sets against top aides. He also boxed, holding bouts in the White House that were far more intimate affairs than Sunday’s UFC fight. While sparring with his military aide Col. Daniel T. Moore in 1905, Roosevelt detached the retina of his left eye.

During a recent New York Post interview, Trump was asked about Roosevelt and replied that he “had a lot of energy, loved the outdoors.” He indicated that he knew about Roosevelt’s having boxed at the White House but didn’t comment on how the UFC event might compare.

Other presidents brought more sports with them

Hoover used the lawn to play a combination of tennis and volleyball involving 6-pound (2.7-kilogram) medicine balls that White House physician Adm. Joel T. Boone was credited with inventing to improve his fitness. The game eventually became known as Hoover-ball.

His successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had an indoor pool built for polio therapy. Harry S. Truman ordered an old horseshoe pit removed from the White House grounds, but the first President Bush reinstalled it in 1989.

His son hosted T-ball on the South Lawn beginning in 2001 and presided over 20 games, with his last featuring Little Leaguers who were the children of active-duty military personnel.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Eisenhower used the putting green outside the Oval Office frequently enough to leave golf-spike marks on the floors inside. Barack Obama had White House tennis facilities repainted as a basketball court, though they were converted back as part of a pavilion improvement project overseen by first lady Melania Trump during her husband’s opening term.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Nixon had a single-lane bowling alley built in the White House yet spoke much more frequently in public about his love of football, trying to appeal to sports fans in ways that his advisers initially feared might alienate some. Obama made an event of filling out NCAA brackets with his predicted tournament winner each year.

Trump has attended a series of major sporting events, including Monday’s trip to the NBA finals in New York. The UFC coming to him, however, is unlike anything the presidency has seen.

Troy noted that, as the bevy of musical acts pulling out of the Trump-led celebration to mark America’s 250th birthday illustrates, “The entertainment world is just hostile to Republicans and Trump. So he goes to find his celebrities where he can.”

Trump has been a UFC fan for decades. His 2024 presidential campaign showcased his friendship with the league’s chief, Dana White, and Trump also attended bouts around the country, hoping to energize voters not usually interested in politics.

UFC’s cage matches mirror Trump’s bare-knuckled approach to politics and sometimes can overlap with his policy initiatives. In making the case for his immigration crackdown, Trump once told White to consider setting up a league in which migrants could fight one another — with the winner then squaring off against the UFC champion. He suggested the “migrant guy might win.”

Cullinane noted that the “UFC is dominated by men and this idea of masculinity,” which means “whenever you aim for a certain demographic, you are almost naturally politicizing the sport.”

‘Maybe we’ll never take it down’

The South Lawn’s octagon was built in a matter of weeks and designed to be temporary, unlikely to survive prolonged exposure to the elements. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from musing about leaving it up permanently.

The president has likened his birthday party to an international celebration of yore and The Claw to an architectural marvel in France. He noted on TikTok that Paris’ Eiffel Tower was built to be a temporary structure for the 1889 World’s Fair but then, “They said, ‘You know we sort of like it,’” and eventually, “They never took it down.”

“You know, we’re building something in front of the White House that’s quite attractive to a lot of people,” Trump said before adding, “And I’m looking at it, and maybe we’ll never, ever take it down.”

Troy said that, 20 years from now, the spectacle that is the UFC on the White House lawn may feel normal as accepted traditions on celebrity and sports shift. If so, Trump’s tradition-busting will have played a role.

“Trump, I think, is more willing than other presidents to be asked that question: ‘Why aren’t you doing it the way the previous presidents did?’” Troy said. “Breaking the precedent doesn’t bother him.”

___

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Cambridgeshire County Council has approved traffic calming measures on a residential road

New traffic calming measures will be installed on a town road after “frequent close calls” from cars cutting the corner. Cambridgeshire County Council has proposed adding two sets of speed cushions to a residential street in March to “promote lower traffic speeds and improve road safety”.

A traffic island would also be added to the west end of Norwood Avenue with the cushions opposite numbers 20 and 21 and opposite numbers 7 and 12.

A resident objected to the speed cushions as the road is “barely 200m long” and “the ability for vehicles to achieve more than the maximum 30mph is extremely limited”. In more than three decades of living there, they said they “cannot think of any cases” where an accident was caused by someone driving at 30mph or more.

They also added that “traffic pads and bumps of any sort” would “increase noise and pollution through vehicles decelerating and accelerating at the restrictions”.

But, the resident expressed their support for the traffic island as the “wide mouth of the road” makes it “very easy” for cars to enter “at a speed above what is considered safe as well as cutting the corner”. They said there were “several incidents” of cars losing control and hitting the wall of number 21 or the trees outside.

They said: “There are frequent close calls from vehicles cutting the corner. Adding the island will require vehicles to negotiate the junction correctly and therefore with less speed.

“This speed reduction also has a knock on effect of reducing the ability of said vehicles to accelerate beyond the 30mph limit.” They asked for the island to be installed but the speed pads to be left “for the foreseeable future”.

Council officers said the island’s impact would be “typically localised” on its own. It has been combined with speed pads “to provide a more effective traffic calming solution over a greater length of road”.

They added: “Regarding noise and vibration, these are generally associated with vehicles traversing traffic calming measures at excessive speeds.

“The proposed design, including narrowing with the island, is intended to encourage lower vehicle speeds and smoother vehicle movements, which should help to minimise such effects.”

The proposed traffic calming measures were approved by the council.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance is pressing federal prosecutors to investigate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison over allegations they failed to stop widespread social services fraud, amplifying concerns the White House will use a new Justice Department division to target political rivals.

Vance, who has been tapped to lead the Trump administration’s anti-fraud efforts as he seeks to raise his political profile as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, cited in a letter to the Justice Department a report from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee that alleges Walz and Ellison were aware of pervasive abuse of government programs for years and let it flourish.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to questions Tuesday about whether it would open an investigation. It was unclear what, if any, potential violations of federal law could support a probe into the Democratic Minnesota officials, who have defended their efforts to combat fraud and have characterized a separate Justice Department investigation involving state leaders as politically motivated.

Minnesota has long been under a microscope for staggering amounts of fraud in programs for children and other social services, with dozens of defendants charged under the administrations of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and President Donald Trump, a Republican. Vance’s referral for an investigation into state leaders, however, marks an escalation in the Trump administration’s stated “war on fraud” that officials have said would not be political or partisan.

The Trump administration has clashed repeatedly with Minnesota officials not only about fraud but also the massive federal immigration crackdown that swept across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and other communities and led to widespread protests.

The Justice Department in January served grand jury subpoenas to Minnesota officials as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed or impeded federal law enforcement through public statements they made. The status of that investigation is unclear.

The Trump administration has touted the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division as a crucial step in its efforts to prevent the misuse of taxpayer dollars. The division’s leader, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, is a veteran prosecutor who has vowed to pursue cases “without fear or favor.”

Critics, however, have questioned the administration’s motives behind the new division given that fraud was already prosecuted by the agency’s Criminal Division, which last year announced the largest coordinated takedown of healthcare fraud schemes in Justice Department history.

___

Associated Press reporter Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., contributed to this report.

Initial attempts by women to defy the strict new rules brought in to control everything from their clothes to their education petered out, with women telling the BBC they were cowed by officials’ response to their protests – including being beaten, abused, jailed and even threatened with death by stoning.

Nasa has named four astronauts for its next Artemis moon program mission, including three U.S. astronauts and one from Italy.

The crew will take on a series of challenging tests in Earth orbit in 2027 that are essential for Artemis IV, the first planned crewed mission to the lunar South Pole in 2028.

Randy Bresnik will serve as mission commander, Andre Douglas as mission specialist, Luca Parmitano as pilot and Frank Rubio as mission specialist.

Artemis III will mark Bresnik’s third mission to space, having launched aboard space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-129 mission to the International Space Station in 2009. He later flew on the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the space station.

Parmitano is also slated to achieve his third spaceflight. He was selected by ESA as an astronaut in 2009 and served as a flight engineer on the Italian Space Agency’s first long-duration mission to the space station, launching on a Soyuz from Baikonur in 2013. He returned to the orbital laboratory in 2019 aboard Soyuz MS-13 for his second mission.

Rubio is making his second trip to space after launching aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft from Baikonur to the space station on Sept. 21, 2022. He returned on Sept. 27, 2023, breaking the record for the longest single-duration spaceflight by an American astronaut with 371 days in orbit.

The Artemis III mission is Douglas’ first spaceflight. He previously served as a backup and closeout crew member for the agency’s Artemis II mission.

“Today we take another bold step in humanity’s return to the Moon, building on the extraordinary foundation laid by the Artemis II astronauts,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. “Their achievements reignited global excitement for exploration, and now they pass the torch to the Artemis III team, Randy, Luca, Frank, and Andre.”

He continued, “Artemis III will demonstrate the power of American innovation and international partnership as we test complex rendezvous and docking operations and advance the technologies that will one day carry us deeper into the solar system.

“This mission will require the most awe-inspiring coordination of heavy-lift rocket launches in history, drawing on the talent and capability of teams across government and the spaceflight community. The Artemis III astronauts, alongside ESA and our international partners, and the tens of thousands of the best and brightest across the agency and industry, are ushering in a new Golden Age of exploration carrying forward the hopes and dreams of the next generation just as the Apollo astronauts did for so many of us.”

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time an ESA astronaut has been assigned an Artemis mission. NASA astronaut Bob Hines, who previously served as pilot of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station, was named as a backup crew member. He would join the Artemis III crew if a primary crew member is unable to participate in the mission.

The space agency said the crew will begin training immediately on Orion spacecraft systems and assist in the development and operations of the test versions of Blue Origin and SpaceX landers.

The crew was unveiled two months after Nasa sent astronauts on a record-setting lunar flyby.

EXCLUSIVE: With Somalia referee Omar Artan banned from the United States, ex-players have said it’s a “World Cup of chaos” and “Martin Luther King would be turning in his grave”

There is widespread outrage today after an African World Cup referee was given a gruelling 11-hour immigration interview before being banned from entering the United States.

Somali Omar Artan was humiliated after being refused entry at Miami airport to the shock of politicians and football pundits. He was grilled for 11 hours then put in a “holding cell” for several hours before being put on a flight to Turkey. Black football legend Paul Canoville said: “Martin Luther King would be turning in his grave that this was happening in the 21st Century.” The Prime Minister of Somalia said he was “deeply disappointed.”

In a video posted on social media, former England star Ian Wright highlighted other incidents and described it as a “World Cup of chaos”.

He said: “I’ve just read that the Somalian referee has been denied entry. Every few hours it’s another story, another story about fans denied, players denied, officials denied, journalists denied, now refs.”

The Artan decision sums up some of World Cup turmoil as it was confirmed that ICE agents will be working across the country seeking illegal immigrants during the tournament. Last night, it emerged Iran’s allocation of tickets has been revoked.

An Iranian FA spokesman said: “Depriving Iranian supporters of access to their lawful and official allocation of tickets is an action contrary to the spirit of governing international competitions and the principle of equality among participating countries.

But it is Artan’s controversial ban which has provoked the fiercest response. Hassan Ali Khaire, the Prime Minister of Somalia, said: “I am deeply disappointed by the news that Omar Artan, Africa’s finest referee and one of the best in the world, may be unable to officiate at the FIFA World Cup due to visa-related circumstances.

“Omar has earned his place through talent, hard work, professionalism, and integrity. Having officiated at the highest levels of African and international football, his credentials speak for themselves.

“He represents not only Somalia, but also the aspirations of millions of young Africans who believe excellence should be recognised on the world stage.

“Football is at its best when it brings people together and celebrates merit, inclusion, and opportunity. Omar, Africa and the world stand with you.”

Advertisement

Artan who was sent back on a flight to Turkey said last night: “I am very, very disappointed.

“I’m just simply a referee who’s trying to live his dream – the biggest dream of my life, to come to the World Cup. I had the right papers and everything. I had the right visa.”

He told the New York Times: “I think that they have a problem with my country,”

Following the 11-hour immigration interview, Artan said he was then taken to a separate holding cell where he was detained for several hours before being put on a flight back to Istanbul, Turkey.

Andrew Giuliani, who leads the White House World Cup Task Force said: “While I can’t go into the derog [derogatory information] on that I can tell you it was the right decision by customs and border patrol and I support that decision.”

No official reason for Artan’s repatriation has been issued by US immigration authorities, but Somalia is one of several countries on a travel ban list introduced by President Donald Trump’s administration.

A Customs and Borders Patrol spokesman said: “All travellers seeking entry into the United States, including athletes, coaches, and staff, are subject to CBP inspection and vetting.

“Admissibility determinations are made on a case-by-case basis using law enforcement, national security, and immigration information available at the time of inspection.”

After speaking to the US authorities, world governing body Fifa confirmed Artan will miss the tournament.

A spokesman said: “Fifa can confirm that match official Omar Abdulkadir Artan will be unable to train and officiate at the Fifa World Cup 2026 after he was denied entry into the United States.

Advertisement

“Fifa is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr Artan’s status will not be changed at present.

“In line with previous Fifa events, a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.”

In his online video Wright went on to attack the whole World Cup process: “You know something I’m laughing but it’s not funny, it’s actually not funny and something has to be said.

“The expensive tickets, the most expensive tickets ever, expensive accommodation, transport through the roof. It has to be said.

“Is this how the hosts behave really for the greatest game, the greatest tournament in the world, is this how the hosts behave?

“Are we not hearing more? Are we seeing how Qatar got dragged, are we not hearing more? Is this the spirit of football, really?

“You know who I feel for? I feel for the American fans who are desperate for this, American soccer fans who are desperate for this, how embarrassed they must be. How embarrassing for them this must be.

“This is the World Cup, this is a World Cup of chaos. Whoever wins this World Cup is going to have to go through some serious chaos to get this done.”

Paul Canoville, the first black player to play for Chelsea said: “This has got to stop. How can one of the world’s best referees be banned at Miami airport because he’s Somali and from Africa? This cannot be allowed to continue. What has our world become?

“What will happen next – will the relatives of some of our black players be banned? “Djed Spence, Marcus Rashford, Kobbie Mainoo, Eberechi Eze and the rest of the lads – this creates such a horrible atmosphere.”

“Who else will be targeted at airports and turned back – fans of African sides? Family and friends from other countries who may have differing views?

“Martin Luther King would be turning in his grave that this was happening in the 21st Century.”

A sequel to Switch Sports is coming! You will find me on the tennis court like it’s 2007 all over again.

Archery, Power Cruising, Boxing, Table Tennis, Volleyball, Bowling, Basketball (!), Golf, Skateboarding (using mouse controls) and Thumb Wrestling (?!), Prop Plane and Jump Rope are the available sports.

Releasing on October 22 – going straight onto the Ryder family Christmas list.