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It took some time but Jarell Broxton is finally a Winnipeg Blue Bomber.
The six-foot-five, 325-pound American offensive lineman signed a two-year deal with Winnipeg on Tuesday, the first day of CFL free agency.
Broxton, 32, spent the last five seasons with the B.C. Lions and last season anchored an offensive line that allowed the fewest sacks across the league and averaged a CFL-record 8.04 yards per play.
While Broxton was B.C.’s most outstanding offensive lineman the past three seasons, he originally signed with Winnipeg in February 2020.
The CFL didn’t play that year due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and Broxton went on to join the Lions.
Winnipeg also signed Canadian receiver Tommy Nield and veteran defensive back Jonathan Moxey, both to two-year contracts.
Nield, a six-foot-three, 203-pound Guelph, Ont., native, had 42 catches for 535 yards and five TDs in 13 regular-season games with the Grey Cup-champion Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2025.
The five-foot-nine, 188-pound Moxey spent the last two years with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and prior four seasons with the Calgary Stampeders. He’s coming off a season in which he registered 40 tackles, three interceptions, a forced fumble, fumble recovery and nine pass knockdowns.
Winnipeg Blue Bombers kicker Sergio Castillo is congratulated on his game-winning field goal by Ottawa Redblacks’ Jovan Santos-Knox in August 2025. The two men will be teammates for the 2026 season. (John Woods/The Canadian Press)
And before the 11 a.m. CT start of free agency, Winnipeg also agreed to terms with linebacker Jovan Santos-Knox on a one-year deal. The six-foot-two, 240-pound American began his CFL career with the Bombers (2017-18) but was released this off-season following years with Ottawa (2023-25).
Santos-Knox, 31, has registered 528 tackles, 16 sacks, five interceptions and four forced fumbles in 111 career regular-season games.
Elsewhere, the Calgary Stampeders signed Canadian receiver Dejon Brissett to a two-year deal. The Mississauga, Ont., native spent the past five seasons with the Toronto Argonauts, winning two Grey Cups.
Brissett was named the top Canadian in Toronto’s ’24 championship win over Winnipeg.
The Ottawa Redblacks signed veteran defensive back Demerio Houston to a one-year deal. The 29-year-old American appeared in five games last year with Winnipeg, and has 14 career picks in 50 contests with Winnipeg and Calgary.
But the opening day of free agency was anti-climatic as many of Tuesday’s moves had been previously reported Feb. 1 when the CFL’s negotiation window opened.
In other transactions Calgary signed American defensive back Devodric Bynum. He played 19 games over two seasons with the Edmonton Elks, registering 40 tackles, five interceptions and one forced fumble.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats signed Global punter Fraser Masin to a two-year contact. Calgary selected the 24-year-old Australian first overall in the 2025 CFL global draft and he averaged 46 yards over 27 punts in five regular-season games.
What would Wallace – everyone’s favourite amateur Yorkshire inventor – look like with a moustache, straw boater and postal worker’s coat? Would a huge set of teeth suit his faithful beagle, Gromit? How about a nose shaped like a banana?
Such questions are answered by an illuminating and sometimes alarming exhibition at east London’s Young V&A that showcases the work of the world’s leading stop-motion outfit, the Bristol-based Aardman studios. Early sketches for Nick Park’s much-loved characters reveal that Wallace was once just a few bristles short of Hitler, while Gromit had fangs and the ability to speak.
Such designs were judiciously smoothed along the way: Gromit became toothless and mute, and Wallace’s long, thin face was massaged into something wider and friendlier after Park watched Peter Sallis, the original voice of Wallace, enunciating the word “cheese”.
Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends opens on Thursday and runs until 25 November, two months after the release of the studio’s third Shaun the Sheep movie, The Beast of Mossy Bottom. Aardman, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is one of UK film’s most enduring and endearing success stories, with a current total of four Oscars and eight Baftas.
Its first film, Chicken Run, is still the highest-grossing stop-motion movie of all time, taking $225m – about five times its budget – while its latest, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, became the BBC’s most-watched scripted show in two decades after it aired on Christmas Day in 2024.
Sales for the exhibition are comparable to those enjoyed at the V&A’s main site in South Kensington. More than a quarter of the tickets have already gone, and the first three weeks are entirely sold out.
More than 150 items are on display, including never-before-seen models, sets and storyboards from Aardman’s archives. They are all the more precious for their scarcity. A fire destroyed thousands of items in 2005, including the original Creature Comforts and Chicken Run models.
The exhibition’s layout intends to recreate the experience of touring the company’s studios, offering children “a peek behind the curtain” – and hopefully inspiring them to similar endeavours said the chief curator, Alex Newson. Boards around the four large rooms precis the key jobs across the studio – such as writer, puppet maker and director of photography – and the skillsets needed.
Aardman’s co-founders, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, began modelling together as schoolboys in the 1960s on Lord’s kitchen table in Woking. “Our working hours were constrained by mealtimes,” he said. “We had to finish by 6pm and get out of the way.”
They borrowed a 16mm clockwork camera from Sproxton’s father, “which meant we were in an unusual and privileged position”, Lord said. “Now it’s democratic because everyone’s got a camera. And it’s such a powerful thing for young people to be able to bring something to life.”
The studio was founded in 1976, then given fresh energy by Park’s arrival in 1985. It now employs more than 500 people.
“Aardman is an incredibly complex and skilled operation,” said Newson. “It’s also slow. Each animator only produces around two seconds of footage a day. Yet it’s one of the most accessible creative processes; even a small child can grasp it.”
The exhibition offers ample opportunity for children to get hands-on – repeat visits are encouraged and included in the price. One area enables them to shoot a 20-frame stop-motion short using Playmobil figures, while another offers the tools – rubber gloves, drumsticks and coconuts – for them to provide a soundtrack.
Many models on display are designed to be handled, as are samples of their malleable metal skeletons. One scene featuring Feathers McGraw – Wallace and Gromit’s sinister penguin nemesis – is set up so visitors can manipulate the lighting rig and witness the dramatic effect that subtle changes can make.
The demographic of visitors is likely to stretch beyond primary school age, but the exhibits have been tailored to children. “What we see with kids is that they run to the interactive things first,” said Newson. “Without those things to do, they won’t engage with things in cases and on the walls.”
These include meticulous models such as Gromit’s vegetable patch, the local museum from The Wrong Trousers and a remarkably large and detailed ship from 2012’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! – which Lord says is the exhibit of which he’s fondest. “I love that thing,” he said. “It was a totem for the whole production: wonderful, bonkers, mad.”
Gromit in the greenhouse model used in the filming of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at the Young V&A in London. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Scores of spare mouths are on display – inserted and ejected from figurines to speed production – likewise a selection of everyday objects occasionally drafted in, such as clingfilm, tinfoil, icing sugar and lentils, the lentils used as rivets on Wallace’s space rocket.
TV screens explain various Aardman idiosyncrasies, such as the “model hospital” that specialises in ear repair and eye wiping. One striking video shows Park acting out storyboards with co-directors, the better to later recreate plausible facial expressions in clay.
Park can appear a self-effacing figure on awards podiums, but such footage reveals him to be a highly adept and rubbery performer, a match for any of the A-listers he brings on board for voice work.
Many of Aardman’s films have explored the tension between embracing technical advance and being wary of it turning on its originators, but the exhibition suggests the studio has found a happy medium. Thumbprints are generally left intact, but cutting-edge software is employed to aid innovation. “The digital processes support the handcrafted processes,” said Newson.
“Stop-motion is maybe more loved than it ever has been. It’s not an antidote to AI, but there is something about its homespun nature that resonates. It’s a counterpoint.”
That such a sentiment has international reach is supported by Aardman’s theme parks in Japan, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, as well as outside Liverpool. Wallace and Gromit are remarkably popular in South Korea, but the lack of dialogue in Shaun the Sheep helps to explain why those characters account for 35% of the studio’s overseas business.
Other diffusion lines include a Shaun circus show, scheduled to open in Manchester this year, partnerships with hotels and restaurants, and a few on-the-hoof ventures. The Shaun the Sheep restaurant in Dubai, for instance, with its menu of lamb’s brain, tongue, eyes, brain and trotters, is unlikely to be official.
The concepts behind the exhibition have been road-tested by years of schools’ workshops and young internships pioneered by the company, said Newson. For Lord, his involvement in the former has led him to believe the “simple pleasure” of working with clay remains consistent. “Modelling is engrossing,” he said, and it can work in symbiosis with the attractions of an smartphone.
“What we do at Aardman is really technical and complicated. It requires great skill and great patience, but even so, it’s basically telling jokes and funny stories and creating good characters. Yes, we’ve done clay for 50 years. But we’ve also done play.”
The Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych has accused the International Olympic Committee of “betrayal” after it banned his racing helmet, which showed images of athletes and his friends that were killed following Russia’s invasion, from the Winter Olympics.
On Tuesday, Ukraine launched an appeal against the decision, arguing that Heraskevych should be allowed to use his “helmet of memory’, showing the weightlifter Alina Peregudova, boxer Pavlo Ishchenko, ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov at the Winter Olympics.
However the appeal was quickly rejected by the IOC, which said it violated its rules regarding political expression under Rule 50.2 of its Olympic charter. But the IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said that they would make an exception by allowing Heraskevych to wear a black armband in competition.
“There was an informal meeting last night with Mr Heraskevych, his coach, and the delegation, and we reiterated our understanding of the athlete’s wish to pay tribute to his fellow Ukrainian athletes, which he’s done during training and on social media,” said Adams.
“After the meeting, we also have reiterated that we will make an exception to the guidelines to allow him to wear a black arm band during competition to make that commemoration,” he added.
“What we’ve tried to do is to address his desires with compassion and understanding. We will not stop him expressing himself in press conferences, in the mixed zone and elsewhere. And we feel that this is a good compromise.”
But in messages posted to social media late on Tuesday and on Wednesday, Heraskevych made clear his frustration with the IOC’s stance.
“A decision that simply breaks my heart,” he wrote. “The feeling that the IOC is betraying those athletes who were part of the Olympic movement, not allowing them to be honoured on the sports arena where these athletes will never be able to step again.”
Heraskevych, Ukraine’s first skeleton athlete, also posted a picture of him holding up a “No War in Ukraine” sign at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, days before Russia’s 2022 invasion of the country.
And he also questioned why the IOC had cleared 13 athletes from Russia to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs) in Milano-Cortina.
“Unfortunately, over these years this call for peace has only become even more relevant,” he said. “Also over these four years, the IOC has changed dramatically. Back then, in that action, they saw a call for peace and did not apply any sanctions against me.
“Now, at the Olympics, we have already seen a large number of Russian flags in the stands, on the helmet of one of the athletes – and for the IOC, this is not a violation.
“Yet a violation was found in the ‘helmet of memory’, which pays tribute to members of the Ukrainian sports family who have been killed since the last Olympic Games were held. The truth is on our side.”
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The House Committee on Homeland Security hears testimony from officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday, February 10.
The hearing comes after the fatal shootings of anti-ICE demonstrators in Minnesota over the last several weeks.
Testifying will be Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit from the Trump administration seeking to acquire Michigan’s voter registration rolls.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, is the latest in a string of legal losses over the acquisition of sensitive voter information.
The Trump administration has sued multiple states over voter information in an effort to force them to clean up their voter lists.
DOJ TARGETS NONCITIZENS ON VOTER ROLLS AS PART OF TRUMP ELECTION INTEGRITY PUSH
President Donald Trump has been trying via lawsuits to get states to turn over their voter rolls, but judges have been blocking his efforts in a number of states.(Getty Images)
Attorney General Pam Bondi argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 gave her the power to compel states to turn over their lists. In a 23-page brief, Jarbou disagreed, saying the law applied to voter applications.
“If the distinction between voter registration applications and voter registration lists is overly pedantic, it is a pedantic distinction made by Congress, and it is Congress’s prerogative to make distinctions that may seem unnecessary to a person reading the statute over six decades after its passage, the judge wrote. “
“Needless to say, the existence of a statewide computerized voter list was not foreseeable to the Congress of 1960, and it is possible that legislators would have included such a list in the CRA’s disclosure provisions had they imagined the possibility,” Jarbou added.
TRUMP APPOINTEE VOWS TO FOCUS DOJ’S LARGEST DIVISION ON DEI, DENATURALIZATION
Attorney General Pam Bondi argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 allows her to compel states to turn over their voter rolls, but a federal judge in Michigan disagreed.(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The judge noted that the court is not a “telepathic time-traveler,” and thus it “cannot rewrite Congressional legislation to cover a situation that Congress may not have foreseen.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House and Michigan officials for comment.
Since May 2025, the Trump administration has demanded nearly every state and Washington, D.C., hand over election-related records and data, such as full copies of statewide voter registration lists and ballots from previous elections, as well as access to voting equipment, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a Trump administration lawsuit seeking voter registration information from Michigan. (Getty Images)
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The federal government maintains that it needs the records to make sure that states ensure accurate voter records and the removal of eligible voters to prevent fraud.
An Afghan asylum seeker has been found guilty of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Warwickshire.
Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, “targeted” the child after spotting her in a park in Nuneaton last July, prosecutors said.
The attack sparked protests in the town, with demonstrators holding St George’s Cross flags and Union flags as they marched along the high street chanting “stop the boats” and “we want our country back”.
Mulakhil was unanimously convicted at Warwick Crown Court of rape and two counts of sexual assault, having admitted a further rape charge before his trial.
Jurors also convicted him of child abduction and taking an indecent video of the girl during her ordeal.
He had told the court he did not force the girl to do anything, and did not threaten her family, but had filmed her, at her insistence, during a brief period of sexual activity.
Mulakhil told police he believed the girl was 19 and that she had initiated what was his first sexual encounter.
Co-defendant Mohammad Kabir, also an Afghan national, was acquitted of intentional strangulation, attempted child abduction and committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence.
Kabir, who is 24 according to court documents but told jurors he was 22, was cleared after maintaining he never touched the victim and had no sexual intentions towards her.
Image: The trial was held at Warwick Crown Court. Pic: PA
Jurors were told Mulakhil arrived in the UK four months before the rapes and had made an immigration application linked to “problems” he had experienced in Afghanistan.
The trial was not told he had arrived in Britain by small boat, or that Kabir had entered the UK by the same method on Christmas Day in 2024.
Read more from Sky News: Teen sentenced for murder of 12-year-old in random attack King should encourage Andrew to testify about Epstein – poll
The men’s arrest and charge prompted Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Warwickshire County Council leader George Finch to claim there had been a “cover-up” of details about the attack.
In August, Mr Farage also suggested police should release the immigration status of people charged with offences.
Guidance for police has since changed to allow forces to give nationality and ethnicity details if there is a legitimate policing purpose – but forces still do not confirm the immigration status of crime suspects.
Mulakhil was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on a date to be fixed.
Judge Kristina Montgomery KC said: “He will plainly receive a substantial custodial sentence which will automatically make him liable for deportation at its conclusion.”
She thanked jurors for discharging their duties without paying regard to the “noise” surrounding the proceedings.
A 23-year-old British woman who was shot dead by her father had argued with him about Donald Trump earlier that day, an inquest has heard.
Lucy Harrison, a fashion buyer from Warrington, Cheshire, was staying with her father, Kris Harrison, and his family at their home in Prosper, Texas, in January last year.
Ms Harrison’s boyfriend, Sam Littler, who made the trip with her, told Cheshire Coroner’s Court she would often become upset with her father when he spoke about his gun ownership.
He said that on the morning of 10 January – when the couple were due to fly home – Ms Harrison and her father argued about Donald Trump.
“Kris and Lucy ended up having quite a big argument which led to Lucy running upstairs and being upset,” Mr Littler said.
He said Ms Harrison asked her father how he’d feel if she was sexually assaulted.
Her father replied that he had two other daughters who lived with him so it would not upset him that much, the inquest heard.
Image: Donald Trump
Then, Mr Littler said, about half an hour before they were due to leave for the airport, Mr Harrison took his daughter by the hand and led her into his ground-floor bedroom.
He said he heard a loud bang some 15 seconds later, before Mr Harrison started screaming for his wife, Heather.
Mr Littler said: “I remember running into the room and Lucy was lying on the floor near the entrance to the bathroom and Kris was just screaming, just sort of nonsense.”
Read more: Teen sentenced for murder of 12-year-old Home Alone-inspired drug dealer rigged house with traps
Ms Harrison, who worked for fashion brand Boohoo, was described as a “real force of life” by her mother, Jane Coates.
She said: “She cared. She was passionate about things. She loved to have debates about things that meant a lot to her.”
The inquest was also told that Mr Harrison had previously been to rehab for alcohol addiction.
He did not attend the hearing, but his representative, Ana Samuel, said it was “more akin to a criminal investigation than a fact-finding inquiry”.
Swedish is a vibrant language spoken by about 10 million people, mostly in Sweden and Finland. But Swedish young people are often proficient in English, too.
Although English has no official status in Sweden, proficiency in English is a formal requirement to progress in education, and often for employment and social activity as well. The Swedish national curriculum points out that “the English language surrounds us in our daily lives and is used in areas as diverse as politics, education and economics”.
Like many national languages in Europe, Swedish is increasingly sharing its space with English. Public spaces have long been papered with signs and advertising in English, or both Swedish and English.
There is a lack of interest in learning other foreign languages among Swedish young people: English is thought to be enough.
English is the default language (lingua franca) for Swedish speakers in any situation where someone is thought not to be fully proficient in Swedish, both in international travel and at home in Sweden when talking to visitors or migrants. In fact, migrants report finding it hard to get Swedes to speak Swedish with them.
In Swedish secondary schools, English language teaching aspires to help students speak English with confidence. English communication skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing – are taught and assessed, with national testing beginning in year six (age 12). The emphasis is on implicit language knowledge (being able to use the language) rather than explicit language knowledge (knowing about the language).
Accurate language production is not an explicit aim in the curriculum. Consequently, young people, though often orally proficient due to widespread exposure to English, may lack knowledge of grammar and conventions, allowing them to communicate effectively but not always with full accuracy.
This potential lack of accuracy does not stop young Swedes from gravitating towards English. Outside of the classroom, Swedish students engage with English more extensively than many of their peers abroad. English retains significant appeal due to its prominence in media and advertising, the popularity of British and American culture, and the prevalence of Swedish music artists using English in songwriting.
What’s more, many young people are inclined to use English on social media platforms, for swearing, and in slang expressions. Much of the language young people in Sweden encounter online is English. Youth media consumption in Sweden, from Netflix to YouTube, from TikTok to Snapchat, is primarily in English.
Many Swedish influencers generate content in English. Gaming in Sweden has always been overwhelmingly in English.
Although schools provide exposure to formal language aspects and a chance to receive some corrective feedback, students will usually simultaneously be acquiring English informally outside the classroom.
This English language use is based on students’ personal interests, such as gaming, sports, pop music and reading. The students are not actively aiming to develop their English, but pick up vocabulary, pronunciation and structure while doing something that interests them.
Willingness to use English is not the same thing as a solid knowledge of the language. Most students benefit from combining classroom learning with out-of-school exposure to fully develop their English proficiency. Ideally, teachers should acknowledge and integrate this language use into their instruction.
The new upper secondary English syllabus reflects this by emphasising the value of raising students’ awareness of how language can be learned beyond school.
What goes on in schools is only a small part of how young people learn English in Sweden. Formal instruction and informal language use offer much more together than separately.
The mud walls are thought to date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
New protections for Whittlesey mud walls(Image: Fenland District Council)
A Cambridgeshire town’s mud walls have been given new protections. Traditional mud walls in Whittlesey now cannot be demolished, removed, or altered without specific planning permission.
An immediate ‘Article 4 Direction’ requiring the permission for works affecting traditional mud walls was agreed by Fenland District Council’s cabinet committee at the end of January. A consultation is now open for the public to have their say.
Cllr Dee Laws, Fenland’s portfolio holder for planning said: “Whittlesey’s traditional mud walls are a distinctive and irreplaceable element of the town’s heritage, and their continued loss would result in permanent harm to local character and sense of place.
“We’re delighted to take this action to offer protection for these important features and look forward to working with owners of land and property where the walls are to ensure they’re conserved.”
A report to the council’s cabinet said Whittlesey’s nationally rare mud walls were made using locally sourced clay mixed with straw and built in tapering layers. Most of Whittlesey’s mud walls are thought to date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
There are several sections of boundary mud walls in Whittlesey. While seven are Grade II listed, the others were not protected.
The Article 4 direction does not wholly prevent any changes being made to traditional mud walls. It does now require planning permission to be sought and granted beforehand.
This allows the council to properly assess the impact of proposed works, balance heritage considerations with other material planning matters, and grant permission where works are justified and appropriately designed. The council’s consultation on the new protections runs until Monday, March 16.
