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The U.S. military announced another deadly strike against a vessel that it alleges was involved in “narco-trafficking” efforts.
“On April 19, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” U.S. Southern Command indicated in a post on X.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the post continued.
(L/R) U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, nominee for Commander of U.S. Southern Command, and U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Joshua M. Rudd, nominee for Director of the National Security Agency, Chief of Central Security Service, and Command of U.S. Cyber Command, testify during a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on their nominations on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15, 2026.(Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
In a completely different part of the world, amid ongoing tensions between America and Iran, the U.S. attacked an Iranian-flagged cargo ship on April 19.
“Guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance (DDG 111) intercepted M/V Touska as it transited the north Arabian Sea at 17 knots enroute to Bandar Abbas, Iran. American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade,” U.S. Central Command noted.
President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, April 16, 2026.(Graeme Sloan/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room. U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the non-compliant vessel, which remains in U.S. custody,” CENTCOM noted.
The UK government is opening £80 million in AI procurement talks with tech firms, drawing on its £500 million sovereign capability fund.
An official notice published late last week says the government wants to help validate new AI capabilities and de-risk investment for the wider market by acting as an early customer.
Future opportunities might include government contracts to develop prototype AI capabilities and the opportunity to establish close relationships with government departments, the notice says.
It suggests a competition for contracts could launch as soon as July 2026, each worth up to £5 million per project, and lasting 12 to 24 months, depending on the scope of the project.
The Department for Science, Innovation & Technology plans to set challenges looking for capabilities in advancing scientific discovery, health and social care, national security and defense, cybersecurity, transport, energy and net zero, and public service delivery.
The market engagement follows the DSIT’s promise of £500 million investment in UK AI designed to create jobs and drive economic growth. A new Sovereign AI Unit would act like a venture capital fund within government, investing in UK AI firms.
“AI is the most powerful technology of our lifetime, with the potential to transform every aspect of our lives. It is critical to our economic prosperity and non-negotiable for our national security. That is why we [the UK] must be an AI maker, not just an AI taker.”
Sovereign AI is set to be chaired by Balderton venture capital partner James Wise while Josephine Kant, a former Google employee, is heading up ventures.
In the procurement notice, DSIT says successful bidders will “retain ownership of all background IP and foreground IP created during the project.”
They are then free to exploit their IP commercially or sell it to other customers. The government intends to retain usage rights to the foreground IP developed during the project, but will not seek to capture further economic value from it.
The government has already announced an equity investment in Callosum, an AI infrastructure company. Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio, and Odyssey are set to follow.
DSIT says companies interested in the first procurement round should make contact by May 16. ®
In an interview with the New York Times, Theron said: “Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day,” adding: “That was a very reckless comment on two art forms that we need to lift up constantly because, yes, they do have a hard time. But in 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothée’s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live.”
Theron, who studied as a teenager at the Joffrey Ballet in New York before a knee injury prevented her from continuing with the art form, also commented on the physical price dancers pay. “It taught me to be tough. It’s borderline abusive. There were several times that I had blood infections from blisters that just never healed. And you don’t get a day off. I’m literally talking about bleeding through your shoes.”
Chalamet made the comments in February during a video conversation with fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, in which he said: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera … Things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this any more.’” High-profile figures including Jamie Lee Curtis, Sam Taylor-Johnson, ballet star Misty Copeland, Eva Mendes and Helen Hunt have previously registered their disapproval of Chalamet’s remarks, while Italian film-maker and opera director Luca Guadagnino, who cast Chalamet in the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, defended the actor, saying he didn’t “understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic”.
In the interview, Theron also discussed her childhood and teenage years in South Africa, including her father’s death after being shot by her mother in self-defence. Theron described her father as a “full-blown functioning drunk” and said that her mother “sent me to a boarding school specifically because she wanted me to get out of the house”.
She described in detail the day of the shooting, when her father came to their house in June 1991 in Benoni, near Johannesburg, and attempted to break in. Theron said: “He shot through the steel doors to get in, making it very clear that he was going to kill us … [My mother] came into my bedroom. The two of us were holding the door with our bodies because there wasn’t a lock on it. And he just stepped back and started shooting through the door. And this is the crazy thing: not one bullet hit us.”
Theron added: “He walked to the [gun] safe, and my mom pulled the door open … [and] she followed my father, who was by then opening the safe to get more weapons out, and she shot him.”
Theron’s mother Gerda was not prosecuted for the shooting, after South Africa’s attorney general ruled it was an act of self-defence. Theron said: “The next morning she sent me to school. She was just like, We’re going to move on. Not necessarily the healthiest thing, but it worked for us.”
Michigan is among states doubling down on rejecting Trump administration investigations and oversight into elections, claiming protection of the right to vote, potentially setting up a battle that could escalate to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Justice Department is demanding roughly 865,000 ballots and hundreds of thousands of related election records from the Detroit area’s 2024 election, threatening to seek a court order if the materials are not turned over within 14 days.
In an April 14 letter to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon asked for “all ballots (including absentee and provisional), ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes” from the November 2024 federal election, saying the department was acting under federal records-retention law and investigating whether election laws were followed.
Dhillon wrote that the request was based on a “history of fraud convictions and other allegations” in Wayne County and warned that failure to comply “may result in the United States seeking a court order for production of such records.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon arrives for a news conference at the Justice Department on September 29, 2025 in Washington, DC.(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Here @theJusticeDept, ensuring election integrity is a paramount duty,” Dhillon wrote Sunday on X, sharing the video of her appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. “Many states fail to clean noncitizen & deceased people from their voter rolls, and under my leadership, @CivilRights will continue working to ensure that ONLY eligible American citizens vote in our elections!”
Dhillon added her investigations seek to “ensure accountability for the outrageous weaponization of the deep state against President Trump and his team.”
The demand marks the latest step in a broader push by the Trump administration to scrutinize election procedures in key swing states after earlier moves involving 2020 ballots in Georgia and election records in Arizona.
Democrat officials in Michigan blasted the request as baseless and politically motivated.
“If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told The Washington Post.
The Justice Department’s request covers ballots, ballot envelopes and ballot receipts in Wayne County, which includes Detroit.
Nessel wrote in a separate letter that the department is seeking about 865,000 ballots and that the request was directed to the wrong office because the ballots are held by 43 municipal clerks, not the Wayne County clerk.
In her letter, Dhillon cited three voter-fraud cases and repeated allegations raised in a 2020 lawsuit against Detroit and Wayne County over absentee-ballot handling. That suit was later dismissed, with a judge finding the allegations were not credible.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer listens as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. representative for New York’s 14th congressional district, speaks during a townhall panel on U.S. foreign policy at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on February 13, 2026 in Munich, Germany.(Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Nessel argued that Dhillon’s request is a “fishing expedition” that goes too far back in state election history, and the past findings of fraud in 2020 were not widespread, claiming the “the process worked” in rooting out fraud.
Further investigation will be “an unwarranted intrusion into Michigan elections,” she added, and would put an undue burden on elections officials before the Aug. 2 primary, which more than three months away.
“Any form of federal interference in Michigan’s elections, including any attempt to seize election records, will be closely scrutinized,” she warned.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the request a “poorly disguised attempt to justify more doubt and misinformation about our elections,” while Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson described it as the administration’s “latest attempt to interfere in our elections,” according to the Post.
The Post report of Michigan’s letter to Dhillon came hours after her appearance on Fox News, where Dhillon laid out the work of the DOJ and the obstruction it faces from Democrat-run states like Michigan.
“I’ve requested the voter rolls from all states and the District of Columbia,” Dhillon told Bartiromo. “About a third of the states have voluntarily complied with us or reached settlements with us, and we’ve run some of those records.
“I’m suing 29 states and the District of Columbia for their refusal to give us the voter rolls to which the attorney general or the acting attorney general is entitled under the Civil Rights Act of 1960. We’re doing that to make sure that states are in compliance,” she said. “And guess what? States are not in compliance, even those ones who want to do so.”
Dhillon noted that in the DOJ’s investigation into the states that have cooperated with transparency to her requests, “we found at least 350,000 dead people currently on the voter rolls in those jurisdictions.”
“And we’ve referred approximately 25,000 people with no citizenship records to Homeland Security to look at, you know, dig into that further and see the extent to which people voted,” she continued. “I’m in touch with voting rights activists who are showing me information about people who have voted, who are not American citizens.”
“So the left told us, this never happens. And it’s a myth,” Dhillon continued. “It definitely happened just recently, someone was indicted in Minnesota, of all places, for voting without being a citizen.”
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Amy Winehouse’s father has lost a high court claim against two of his daughter’s friends over the auctioning of items once owned by the singer.
Mitch Winehouse, acting as the administrator of his daughter’s estate, sued her stylist Naomi Parry and friend Catriona Gourlay over claims they profited from selling dozens of items at auctions in the US in 2021 and 2023.
Lawyers for Mitch Winehouse told a trial in December the two women had “deliberately concealed” the sales, and that the legal proceedings were his “only means of obtaining answers”. Barristers for Parry and Gourlay said the items were either gifts from Amy Winehouse, or were already owned by their clients.
In her ruling, the deputy high court judge Sarah Clarke KC said: “I find that neither Ms Parry nor Ms Gourlay deliberately concealed any of their disputed items from the claimant, and even if I am wrong about that, Mr Winehouse could have discovered what disputed items the defendants had with reasonable diligence.”
During the trial, lawyers for Parry accused Mitch Winehouse of bringing the claim out of “petty jealousy”, which he denied. He said he thought the money from the 2021 auction would be split between him, Amy Winehouse’s mother Janis, and the Amy Winehouse Foundation (AWF).
The court heard how the auction catalogue contained 834 items and that the sale raised $1.4m (£1.05m) for the Amy Winehouse estate, 30% of which went to the foundation. Items Parry sold included a silk mini dress worn by Winehouse during her final performance in Belgrade in Serbia, which was auctioned for $243,200.
She told the court Mitch Winehouse had offered her $250,000 for the proceeds of her sale and to make the legal claim go away, but that she would “rather set the money on fire than give him a penny”.
The judge said: “Mr Winehouse is clearly a strong character but also someone who has suffered a great tragedy in the loss of his daughter. Since Amy’s death, he has worked hard to keep her memory alive, including through the charitable entity the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which supports and informs young people through a variety of projects.
“It is also the case that Amy’s estate – including, in particular, the royalties from Back to Black – has made Mr Winehouse personally extremely wealthy.
“Mr Winehouse is therefore understandably sensitive about anyone who he perceives as exploiting Amy’s memory, particularly for financial gain, and he is keen to promote the AWF. But also, in my judgment, he is equally sensitive about ensuring that the family continue to benefit financially.”
She also said that Mitch Winehouse “likes to dominate people and situations”, that she found him to be an “unreliable witness” and that he brought the legal action “without bothering to check until shortly before trial” he had a valid claim for the items he was claiming for.
After the judgment, Parry said: “Today, the high court has cleared my name, unequivocally and in full, after years of deeply damaging and unfounded allegations brought by Mitch Winehouse.
“This was not a partial outcome or a matter of nuance. The claim has failed entirely. It should never have been brought.
“I stood beside Amy as a friend, a creative partner and her costume designer. What we shared was built on trust, loyalty and a genuine love of the work. To see that relationship misrepresented so publicly has been both painful and profoundly unjust.
“This judgment restores the truth. It does not, however, erase the toll, on my health, my work and my life, of defending myself against claims that had no evidential foundation.”
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The then cabinet secretary, Simon Case, appeared to advise Keir Starmer to complete security vetting for Peter Mandelson before announcing an appointment, documents reveal.
The documents released last month by the Cabinet Office as part of the disclosures over the US ambassadorial appointment also show Mandelson was offered a “higher tiers” briefing before his vetting was finalised.
The Guardian revealed last week that Mandelson failed his initial vetting by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) and that decision was then overruled by the Foreign Office. He was appointed as US ambassador but sacked in September after new disclosures about his friendship with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter written by Case to the prime minister, he is advised that in order to give the Washington role to a political appointee, the FCDO would “develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice”.
The letter, sent on 11 November 2024, said the decision would then be formalised by the foreign secretary in a letter to the FCDO. Mandelson’s appointment was announced by No 10 just over a month later, on 20 December.
The documents also show Mandelson was offered a “higher tiers” briefing on 6 January, before his developed vetting was confirmed on 29 January. This means he was offered highly classified briefing from the FCDO as US ambassador before he finished the formal vetting process, one he is now known to have failed before that outcome was overruled by the Foreign Office.
Starmer will deliver a high-stakes statement to MPs on Monday where he will set out how Mandelson was able to take up his role as UK ambassador without the Foreign Office revealing it had overruled the decision to fail his vetting.
In Case’s original letter to Starmer, he suggests political appointments are rare, giving examples of Ed Llewellyn, David Cameron’s former chief of staff who was appointed ambassador to France.
Downing Street has strongly disputed claims by allies of Robbins that he was prevented by law from telling ministers Mandelson had failed vetting, arguing that there was a difference between being involved in the decision and being informed about it.
It published an explanatory document that said: “No law stops civil servants sensibly flagging UK security vetting recommendations, while rightly protecting detailed sensitive vetting information, to allow ministers to make judgments on appointments or on explaining matters to parliament.”
Asked whether it had been a mistake to not follow Case’s advice, Starmer’s official spokesperson said: “Well you’ve heard since this case, I think the chief secretary to the prime minister [Darren Jones] announced this as part of a formal review of the national security system, we’ve changed the process by which appointments can be made ahead of vetting.”
Pressed on why the prime minister had ignored the advice, he said external appointments to the civil service were normally “subject to obtaining security clearance”.
Tom Fletcher, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, a friend of Robbins, defended his actions on Monday. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “This is a guy who has public service and integrity stitched into his DNA in a way I haven’t seen in any other single individual. And I’ve worked with so many people inside government.
“So he has had an utterly rough few days. He’s a pretty strong character. But I think he’s heartbroken.”
Starmer told the Daily Mirror in an interview on Sunday he would not have appointed Mandelson had he known he had failed vetting. “The fact that I wasn’t told that Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting when he was appointed is astonishing,” he said.
“The fact that I wasn’t told when I said to parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable, and that’s why I intend to set out in parliament on Monday the facts behind that, so there’s full transparency in relation to it.
“But am I furious that I wasn’t told? Yes, I am. Am I furious that other ministers weren’t told? Yes, I am. I should have been told, and I wasn’t told.”
Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss an increase of colon cancer in people under 50 despite overall lowering cancer deaths and a new study linking obesity to vascular dementia.
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Excess salt intake has long been linked to higher blood pressure, but now a new study has also tied it to quicker cognitive decline in certain groups.
In a six-year study of more than 1,200 older adults 60 and older, Australian researchers found that higher baseline dietary sodium intake was associated with faster decline in “episodic recall” in men, but not in women.
“Episodic recall is a type of memory used to recall personal experiences and specific events from one’s past, such as where you parked your car or your first day of school,” according to study author Samantha Gardener, Ph.D., a research fellow in neuroscience at the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.
A new study has linked higher salt intake to quicker cognitive decline in certain groups.(iStock)
“We did not see any relationship between the amount of sodium consumed and memory decline in females,” she told Fox News Digital.
The finding suggests that sodium intake may be a modifiable risk factor for memory decline in older males.
While males did report consuming a greater amount of sodium than females, which could explain why the increased cognitive decline was only observed in males, it could also be due to their higher diastolic blood pressure, according to Gardener.
“We did not see any relationships between the amount of sodium consumed and memory decline in females,” the researcher told Fox News Digital.(iStock)
“Elevated blood pressure is a recognized risk factor for cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and sodium plays a key role in blood pressure regulation,” she said.
The research relied on data from the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) study of aging. The findings were published in the Neurobiology of Aging.
“This study adds to the evidence that high-sodium diets may affect more than blood pressure,” New Jersey-based registered dietitian Erin Palinski-Wade, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.
“These study findings are a good reminder that sodium intake matters for brain and heart health, especially for adults who already eat more than recommended.”
Study limitations
“While excess sodium may impact cognition, it is important to note that this was a longitudinal observational study, meaning it can show an association but cannot rule out other potential factors like overall diet quality, physical activity or other comorbidities,” Palinski-Wade noted.
“These study findings are a good reminder that sodium intake matters for brain and heart health,” a dietitian said.(iStock)
Also, the participants reported their sodium intake via a food frequency questionnaire, which could be subject to recall error, the researchers pointed out.
As sodium exposure was measured only at baseline, changes in intake over time were not captured by the study. It also only included sodium content in foods and beverages, and did not include salt added during cooking or at the table.
The participants were mostly Caucasian, which means the results may not apply to other populations.
“We were not able to identify why sodium intake is having this effect, and this will be researched in the future,” Gardener told Fox News Digital.
“These findings are preliminary, and further investigation is required to evaluate how sodium intake could be incorporated as one modifiable lifestyle factor aimed at delaying Alzheimer’s disease onset.”
Tips for reducing sodium intake
The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day for adults, which is equivalent to roughly 1 teaspoon of table salt.
Typical high-sodium foods in the U.S. diet include pizza, sandwiches and burgers, deli meats, and chips, crackers and salty snacks.
Other high-sodium foods in the grocery store include canned foods, salad dressings, deli meats, cheeses and condiments, according to Tanya Freirich, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist in North Carolina.
Up to 80% of sodium intake comes from processed foods, she noted.
“Replacing one processed snack – such as beef jerky, olives, salted nuts, pretzels and bagged potato or corn chips – with an unprocessed snack is a great place to start,” Freirich, who also was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
Healthier, unprocessed snacks include fruit, lightly salted nuts, carrots and hummus, or lower-sodium versions of chips, she said.
“Fill your diet with foods that promote heart health, including whole fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes, and lean proteins,” a nutritionist advised.(iStock)
“Replacing a few fast food meals with food prepared at home is also an excellent way to reduce your sodium intake by thousands of milligrams,” the expert advised.
Palinski-Wade echoed that the majority of sodium in the diet doesn’t come from the salt shaker, but from ultraprocessed and prepared foods.
“Read the labels, monitor your intake, and fill your diet with foods that promote heart health, including whole fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes, and lean proteins,” she advised.
Successfully lowering sodium intake can reduce the risk of not only high blood pressure and cognitive decline, but also kidney and cardiovascular disease, the experts agreed.
Melissa Rudy is senior health editor and a member of the lifestyle team at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to melissa.rudy@fox.com.
Who: Real Madrid vs Alaves What: La Liga Where: Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid, Spain When: Tuesday, April 21 at 8:30pm (19:30 GMT) How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 16:30 GMT in advance of our live text commentary stream.
Real Madrid have some soul-searching to do after the dramatic defeat by Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinals last week left the 15-time European champions staring at the prospect of a second successive campaign without silverware.
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The Champions League had represented Real’s last realistic route to a trophy. Their La Liga challenge has faltered, with the Madrid side trailing Barcelona by nine points with seven matches remaining.
Defeat by Bayern followed a shock Copa del Rey exit to second-tier Albacete in January and domestic stumbles that have drained momentum. When Real host Alaves in La Liga on Tuesday, it will be a month since they last won in any competition.
Barcelona, meanwhile, could clinch the title for the second successive year when they host Real at the Camp Nou on May 10 with three games to play, a twist that would compound the pain for their old rivals.
For Real to salvage the title, they would require a flawless finish and a collapse from Barca.
Alaves are battling to stay in La Liga, as just a point separates them from the relegation zone.
Arbeloa’s job under threat
Madrid’s season began unsteadily with the appointment of Xabi Alonso, who lasted six months before being replaced by former teammate Alvaro Arbeloa, promoted from his role with the second team in mid-January.
But while performances have shown signs of improvement, results have not.
Arbeloa’s side took the lead three times against Bayern at the Allianz Arena, and until Eduardo Camavinga’s 86th minute red card, had every chance of going through after digging deep and going blow-for-blow with the Bavarian giants in a thrilling clash.
A late double for Bayern consigned Madrid to a 4-3 defeat on the night – one on which Arbeloa said his team gave “their souls and their lives” – and a 6-4 aggregate loss.
The defeat could cost Arbeloa his job, and Los Blancos are braced for pain and possible change in the weeks and months to follow.
“I’ve always tried to help the club in the best way I can, and that’s how it will be until the last day,” Arbeloa told reporters after the match.
“I’m not at all worried [about my future] and I will understand perfectly any decision that the club takes.
“I’m a man of the club – if I’m hurt today it’s not for me, it’s for Real Madrid, and because this year we will not win our 16th [Champions League title].”
Arbeloa during last week’s game against Bayern (AFP)
Failure ‘not an option’ for Madrid
Real’s star striker, Kylian Mbappe, said on Instagram after the game that “failure has never been and never will be an option” for Madrid.
“We need to take a hard look at ourselves to avoid this kind of disappointment again.
“But I promise you one thing: we will start winning again and very soon.”
Alaves fight for survival
Quique Sanchez Flores has made the Basque club more entertaining to watch since becoming manager in early March, however, his side are just a point above 18th-placed Elche in the relegation zone.
Their last few games have been high scoring with a 3-3 draw away at Real Sociedad preceded by a 2-2 home draw with Osasuna and a 4-3 win at Celta Vigo.
Flores described Madrid in comments ahead of the game as a team that “pushes you to the limit”.
“Against an opponent of that stature, they will always commit you much more at the Bernabeu. We have to do things very well and have a pinch of luck, because it is a team that at times pushes you to the limit,” he said.
“We must carry out our plan so that the game lasts as long as possible and we can get to the last 15 or 20 minutes well.”
Quique Sánchez Flores during a game against Villarreal on March 13 [Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images]
Head-to-head
The two clubs have met on 45 occasions, with Madrid winning 37, Alaves five and three drawn.
Madrid have won their last eight games against Alaves, while the visitors last beat Los Blancos in November 2020 when they grabbed a shock 2-1 win at the Bernabeu.
Last five encounters:
December 14, 2025: Alaves 1-2 Real Madrid (La Liga)
April 13, 2025: Alaves 0-1 Real Madrid (La Liga)
September 24, 2024: Real Madrid 3-2 Alaves (La Liga)
May 14, 2024: Real Madrid 5-0 Alaves (La Liga)
December 21, 2023: Alaves 0-1 Real Madrid (La Liga)
What happened last time they played each other?
Kylian Mbappe’s and Rodrygo Goes’s goals earned Real Madrid a tense 2-1 win at Alaves in La Liga.
Following Mbappe’s superb opener on Sunday, Carlos Vicente pulled Alaves level in the second half, but Rodrygo secured the visitors a much-needed victory at Mendizorrotza Stadium.
Real Madrid team news
Andrey Lunin will continue to deputise in goal as first choice keeper, Thibaut Courtois remains unavailable with the thigh injury that has forced him to miss the last five games.
Rodrygo will be on the sidelines for quite a while longer due to the anterior cruciate ligament injury sustained at the beginning of March.
Defender Raul Asencio will miss the game due to gastroenteritis.
However, key midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni will return after missing the defeat to Bayern through suspension.
Midfielder Carlos Benavidez has been ruled out with an injury, while left wing-back Abde Rebbach will miss out due to suspension after he picked up his fifth yellow card of the season.
Alaves have no other reported injuries.
Lucas Boye may earn himself a start after coming off the bench to score in the last two games.
