Fans have been busy speculating the setting for upcoming Assassin's Creed Codename HEXE, and all signs appear to be pointing toward witch trials.

“Ja so eisern wie Granit, so wie einst Real Madrid und so zogen wir in die Bundesliga ein und wir werden auch mal deutscher Meister sein (Irgendwann).” “Yeah, so iron, like granite, just like Real Madrid, so we’ll move into the Bundesliga, and we’ll also become German champions.” They could sing that at Union Berlin, safe in the knowledge they would never actually play Real Madrid. It was a fanciful chant, from a different footballing universe. In 2005-06, when Sergio Ramos was making his Real debut, Union were playing in the Oberliga-Nord, a regional league of clubs in the old East Germany. Less than two decades later, Union’s players and staff and their families gathered to watch the Champions League draw. Eventually, there were two possible pools for them: B and C. They were placed in the latter. And then it became clear: they would meet Real as peers. “Surreal and overwhelming,” said Christian Arbeit, the matchday announcer at Union’s Alte Forsterei ground and a lifelong fan. “For the very first time we are playing the biggest competition in club football and meet the biggest club in the world and it is the very first game.” For Union, life as a Champions League club starts at the Bernabeu. It caps the rise of Union, the underdog club from East Berlin. They haven’t become German champions yet, though they led the table after two games of this campaign and finished fourth last season. They have gatecrashed the European elite with an old-fashioned formula, an almost defiant anti-commercialism that has given them an authenticity that, paradoxically, some corporations find attractive and with a ground that was rebuilt by the fans. Arbeit is one of them, a supporter for almost four decades who took a few days’ leave from his job at a cinema company. “I knew I could never come back if I wouldn’t have helped,” he recalled. Without Arbeit, without the 2,333 supporters who provided 140,000 hours of voluntary work in 2008 and 2009, it is safe to say Union would not have reached the Bundesliga, let alone the Champions League. There was nothing inevitable about this, about the organic, improbable surge of the people’s club from the DDR. The people saved Union when the city of Berlin and the district of Kopenick, each having done nothing to maintain the Alte Forsterei, handed it over to the club, but at a point when the German Football Federation denied it a licence to host matches; unless it was refurbished, anyway. “A very heartwarming 13 months of a building site,” Arbeit remembered. “There was around about 100 people each day – you couldn’t employ more – and 80 of them had never built something before. They were like me – cinema people, teachers, sales people – and you had 20 guys, proper building people, and they had to guide us through this building site. It is kind of a miracle. We have told this story a million times but still when I do talk about it, it gives me goosebumps because it is such a crazy story.” The miracle had its roots in a different country and a different time. Union were not the dominant club in the East German capital; that mantle resided with Dynamo, who were in a run of 10 consecutive titles when a 12-year-old Arbeit first went to a game in 1986 with his father, an engineer who tended to spend his spare time playing the trombone in a Dixieland jazz band. “Until that day I was not interested in football and we came to the stadium and it was a strange world I had never experienced before,” Arbeit said. “There were grown-up men singing and chanting and shouting and swearing and using words I was not allowed to use at home so it was a huge impression of a strange way of freedom.” That freedom brought a contrast with Dynamo Berlin, the club of the notorious Stasi chief Erich Mielke and who benefitted from his patronage. “You don’t go to the secret police unless you have to,” Arbeit rationalised. And so Union attracted a different crowd. “It was more what we nowadays would call alternative culture: the young guys with longer hair, with parka jackets. The club was not an opposition club or a rebel movement because that would not have been possible. But I remember when my classmates noticed I go to Union. It was: ‘They are so-called rowdies and hooligans.’ They were considered a wild bunch, the Union fans. But I experienced them mostly like they are today, very engaged in supporting the team. In funny ways, of course.” Relegation was an occupational hazard for Union back then. German reunification brought other problems. “We played in the third division and it was very regional, it was more or less a Berlin-based league,” Arbeit said. “You had to play on Sunday at 11 in the morning in the drizzling rain and it was about 700 people turning up; it was really depressing. The people had so many more existential problems: How can I find a job? How can I feed my children?” And Union disappeared off the radar of many people, re-emerging with a first indication of their 21st-century propensity to upset more fancied teams. They had spent the 1990s acquiring the nickname of Unpromotables as, stuck in the third division, they found a range of ways not to go up. They were “Unaufstiegbar”. Twice even winning their league was not enough; financial issues meant they were not granted the licence needed to play in a higher division. And then, in 2001, they got promoted and reached the German Cup final, knocking out Borussia Monchengladbach and Bochum on their way. “It was like, wow, how did we do that?” Arbeit recalled. “After many years of being ignored, everyone noticed us.” The route to the Bernabeu nonetheless involved going backwards. Union were relegated twice in four years after the German Cup final. Short of funds, they needed the unpaid labour of their supporters to ensure they could keeping playing at the Alte Forsterei. But it helped they had a loyal fanbase: their status as outsiders may have benefited them whereas Dynamo, the former secret-police club, are now found in the Regionalliga-Nordost. Along the way, Union have acquired different rivals within the same city. They went up to the Bundesliga in 2019, a year after the appointment of the catalytic manager Urs Fischer. And then Hertha BSC got in touch. “I remember when we first got promoted to the Bundesliga, even in the congratulations was included, ‘congratulations, Union, we are happy and we are looking forward to six points,’” said Arbeit. Last season, as Hertha propped up the Bundesliga, Union took six points at their neighbours’ expense. There was long the sense that Berlin, one of Europe’s great capitals, ought to have a Champions League club. Hertha thought it should be them. No one thought it would be Union. The investor Lars Windhorst put €374m into Hertha and got just €15m back. Hertha spent more than €100m on signings in 2019-20, a season of four managers and a bottom-half finish. The most expensive of those buys, Lucas Tousart, joined Union for a cut-price fee this summer. “They manoeuvred themselves into financial and organisational instability,” Arbeit said. “We had not that much money but we had a very stable organisation.” Hertha’s grandiose dreams extended to Union territory. Dirk Zingler, Union’s president since 2004 and another lifelong fan, has described them as an East Berlin club; in a city that was divided for almost three decades, the distinction matters. “We would never go out with the approach to say we are the one club for Berlin,” Arbeit said. “The funny thing is Hertha did that for a very long time. They tried a lot of public campaigns to say that: ‘one city, one club, we are the club for the whole city’.” Instead, Hertha’s members are largely in the west, Union’s generally in the east. Now Champions League football will come to Hertha: or their ground, anyway. When Union first qualified for Europe, Uefa did not allow them to play their 2021-22 Conference League games at the Alte Forsterei. Now they had a choice: a ground with a capacity of 22,000, with fewer than 4,000 seats, but a home of symbolic importance, or a massive venue. Real Madrid, Napoli and Braga will go to West Berlin, to the Olympiastadion. So will thousands of fans, with cheap tickets. “The Champions League is for all Unioners,” said Zingler at the time. “It was one of the most difficult decisions we had to make,” said Arbeit. “We always say it is the people we are doing it for. It is something extraordinary, it is possible it is the only time in our history we reach that competition and that is why we decided to show it to as many people as possible. Still we are a bit sad.” Even Union have to compromise sometimes. But not often. Their matchday is a different experience. “We want to keep the dignity of the football match itself,” Arbeit said. “We don’t want any advertising Zeppelins flying around at the half-time break and no kiss-cam and no T-shirt gun. We don’t make any noise or any announcements in a commercial way and just a little bit, this is already something special in German football. We don’t do a half-time show with sponsored games or quiz shows. You can’t win some products. You have no entertainment before the game. “The people come here and meet their friends and they can have their beer and sausage. Just 20 minutes before kick-off, I just come on the pitch and say hello and introduce the guest team and then our team.” Union nevertheless have a corporate shirt sponsor, Paramount, and JD Sports on their sleeves, but on their own terms. “We develop in sponsorship terms from regional and local companies to international,” Arbeit said. If Union may be Germany’s least commercial club, their opposites are the other East German representatives in the Champions League: RB Leipzig, propelled by the Red Bull group. “From the view of our fans, it was about establishing a monumental marketing piece in football for a product which is Red Bull,” Arbeit said. “We are the last protesting audience: whenever we play against Leipzig our fans spend the first 15 minutes in silence.” If Leipzig – parachuted into a city with two established clubs, Chemie and Lokomotive – are the break from the past and Union a link with it, that still did not bring Ostalgie, the nostalgia for East Germany; DDR flags have been seen at other grounds behind the old Iron Curtain, but not Union’s. But they were born in the DDR. About three-quarters of off-field staff are supporters, some converts after they start working for the club. For most, it is not a stepping stone. A community club nevertheless display their ambition. As a newly-promoted club, they signed the former double Bundesliga winners Neven Subotic and Christian Gentner. A year later, Max Kruse, once the enfant terrible of German football, joined: he ended his first season with an injury-time goal on the final day to take Union into Europe. “Since then, everyone in our surroundings believes we can sign whoever we want. We are not afraid of calling someone up and asking,” Arbeit said. That policy reaped a reward this summer. Enter Robin Gosens, whose final contribution in an Internazionale shirt was to almost equalise in last year’s Champions League final, and, most remarkably, Leonardo Bonucci. The Euro 2020 winner and Italy captain left Juventus to play Champions League football with Union, a sentence that would long have sounded ludicrous. “He was perfectly prepared,” Arbeit explained. “When we had talks with him, he knew almost everything about our club; that was for us kind of a surprise because we didn’t expect this guy to know we have three sides of standing terraces. That meant to us that this person might perfectly fit because he could have gone to America or Saudi Arabia to take the next 20 million or anything but it looked like that he wanted for himself something special as well. When I was a boy, I always thought, why don’t players in the late years of their career, when they made their money already, why don’t they do something nice? And now I experienced that.” Union’s unique sales pitch is to offer less money. After all, they have no billionaire backer, a small stadium, low ticket prices and eschew some commercial deals. They have got players to buy into them, into the dream. Their wage bill last season, before bonuses for Champions League qualification, was in the bottom half of the Bundesliga’s, perhaps the bottom third. The chances are that striker Kevin Behrens can afford a car but, after he scored an opening-day hat-trick against Mainz this season, he was spotted cycling home. Only at Union, perhaps. But then the Unpromotables have done it their way as they have kept on going up and up. Union are the antidote to the worst excesses of 21st-century football. And for the fans who gravitated towards them 40 or 50 years ago, the long-haired and the parka-jacketed who sought some freedom and some wildness in communist East Germany, they don’t need to sing about playing Real Madrid anymore. It’s really happening. Read More Harry Kane is Bundesliga’s greatest weapon in battle for eyeballs Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti hails ‘consistent’ Jude Bellingham Jude Bellingham’s captaincy credentials are in evidence with England on and off the pitch Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti hails ‘consistent’ Jude Bellingham Mohamed Salah, Sven Botman and 5 players to target for FPL Gameweek 6 Big-spending Chelsea rarely threaten in drab goalless draw at Bournemouth

Ryan Reynolds has already taken Hollywood to Wrexham

Watch live as Volodymyr Zelensky holds a news conference at the Nato summit on Wednesday, 12 July. The Ukrainian president met with world leaders in Lithuania as G7 countries announced an international framework that paves the way for long-term security assurances for Ukraine to boost its defences against Russia. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was accused of “scolding” Ukrainians after he said he told them that Britain was "not Amazon" in response to requests for weapons. "I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list” of demands for more assistance. Mr Wallace also revealed that he advised Ukraine that the international community wanted to see “gratitude” for its support in the war with Russia. Rishi Sunak has appeared to try to distance himself from the comments, saying the Ukrainian President Zelensky had repeatedly expressed his gratitude. Wednesday's summit came as Russia launched a drone strike on Kyiv and an old man was killed in Russian shelling in southern Ukraine. An 81-year-old man was killed and his 82-year-old wife wounded in shelling of the southern city of Kherson, region governor Oleksandr Prokudin confirmed. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

On taking off his seat belt in the Red Bull 2023 juggernaut for the final time on race-day in Abu Dhabi, Max Verstappen took stock. The Dutchman had just coasted to a record-extending 19th victory of the season; his 54th overall, with only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher ahead of him now in the all-time stakes. For a man whose unflappability has been the defining characteristic of his championship cruise, the three-time world champion admitted to feeling emotional as he waved goodbye to the RB19. “An incredible season – it was a bit emotional on the in-lap,” he said. “The last time sitting in the car that has of course given me a lot.” A lot is an understatement. Pretty much everything is more accurate. Save a strange anomaly in Singapore in September, Verstappen has been on the podium at the end of every race. His 575 points gave him a 290-point margin over second place: team-mate Sergio Perez. If the Mexican’s tally of 285 was doubled, he’d still be five points shy. LIST OF MAX VERSTAPPEN’S 2023 RECORDS - Most wins in a single season – 19 - Most podium finishes in a season – 21 - Highest points total – 575 - Largest championship-winning margin – 290 - First driver to surpass 1,000 laps led in a single season - Only driver to complete every lap in the 2023 season - Highest win percentage in F1 history – 86.3% He also became the first driver ever to surpass 1,000 laps led in a single season, while his Abu Dhabi victory meant he was the only driver on the grid to complete every lap in 2023. In fact, he has not endured a retirement since Australia last April. The sheer supremacy and dismissal of the opposition – both across the garage and the other nine teams, flailing in his wake – has been ruthless. There has been no let-up. Yet the ultimate indication that this was the most dominant season in F1’s 73-year history is best represented (in a time where podiums and race wins are incomparable due to the current record-breaking calendar) by his win-percentage. Nineteen out of 22 gives him 86.3%. The previous record had held for over 70 years: Alberto Ascari’s 75% in 1952, when he won six of eight races. It makes Verstappen’s 2023 campaign, statistically, the best-ever by some distance. The 26-year-old – whose calculated in-race menace and over-eagerness of his early 20s looks a thing of the past – has set the new benchmark, far beyond the likes of Fangio, Schumacher and Hamilton. Formula 1 has never seen the like before. In Verstappen’s own words: “It will be hard to do something similar again.” But where does it rank in the all-time great sporting seasons? A comparison in this respect is difficult, by virtue of different sports placing different emphasis on different competitions, with the weight of team vs individual at play too. Nonetheless, speculating is fun: we’ll give it a go. Immediate standouts include Tiger Woods’ 2000 season, where he stormed to three of the four majors and nine out of 20 PGA Tour wins. Novak Djokovic – take your pick – has a quadruple of hat-trick major glory in 2011, 2015, 2021 and 2023, while Roger Federer’s 2006 saw him lose to just two players (Rafael Nadal and a young Andy Murray). But even then, Verstappen is superior in the numbers game. Woods entered 20 tournaments in 2000, winning nine to give him a 45% win ratio. Of course, golf has a bigger playing field and is prone to more random winners (and just how F1 would value a bit more uncertainty right now for the sporting product). But still, that’s the facts. Federer played 17 tournaments in 2006, winning 12 of them. The Swiss maestro is closer, with a 70.6% win percentage in tournaments played. He has Rafael Nadal to thank for it not being near-perfect, with four of those five losses at the hands of the Spaniard. Djokovic’s best season for titles was 2015, when he won 11 from 16 tournaments played – 68.75%. Serena Williams had an identical 11/16 titles record in 2013. Still, some way short of Verstappen. In recent years in European football, Barcelona’s treble-winning season in 2014-15 was super impressive. Lionel Messi and co. played 61 matches, winning 51 of them. That gives them 83.6% across the course of the season. Staggering, really. Manchester City’s treble last year came in at 73.77% of matches won, with their 2017-18 100-point season statistically better at 80.7%. Across the Atlantic, only two NBA teams have ever recorded win percentages higher than Verstappen’s: Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in 1995-96 and Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors in 2015-16. The 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only team ever to complete a perfect NFL season, with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots coming close in 2007 before falling at the final Super Bowl hurdle. We could go on and on. Blatantly, different sports have different barometers of success. Different competitions and tournaments have different significance depending on prestige and ranking points, unlike F1 where points are identical for each race. But what this very basic overview does show is that Verstappen in 2023 is very much in the conversation. It still feels as though the Dutchman’s achievements this year are viewed through quite a narrow prism. “It’s all about the car,” says Joe Bloggs, with a Mercedes cap on. Sure, the RB19 is one of the greatest cars in F1 history and has a monumental impact. But Perez’s topsy-turvy season in identical machinery shows there is more to Red Bull’s success than the machine. It needs to be armed and steered by capable hands. Verstappen has barely made a mistake all season. His year of dominance will be looked back on in years to come, similar to the Schumacher reign at the start of the 2000s. It’s now about how big Verstappen’s legacy will be. How many titles can he win in a row? Can he get up to Schumacher and Hamilton’s record of seven? And how many races can he continue to win, with a brash sense of ease and control, along the way? Read More F1 fans spark chaos with brawl at Abu Dhabi Grand Prix IndyCar champion admits breaching McLaren contract in £18m lawsuit over F1 seat Lando Norris slams Sergio Perez after collision: ‘It’s nothing new’ Williams boss refuses to confirm Logan Sargeant’s seat for 2024 F1 2023 season report card: Red Bull flourish but what about Mercedes and Ferrari? Toto Wolff sees ‘Mount Everest’ ahead as Mercedes seek to end Red Bull’s domination

Richard Olson, a former US ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, was sentenced to three years of probation on Friday...

The St. Louis Cardinals have filled their starting rotation. However, they are far from done, and these three players could help them out in 2024.

MLB Rumors: How long will Aaron Judge be out?The New York Yankees received another update on star outfielder Aaron Judge Tuesday, and it provides even more uncertainty. Per Judge, he can't make any promises about his potential return from a toe injury.Had Judge simply suffered turf toe, h...

What are the charges, how serious are they and could Donald Trump still run for president from jail?

Rodrygo has scored twice to give Real Madrid a 2-1 win at Sevilla in the Spanish league

IShowSpeed's accidental $18 million Roblox shirt purchase made waves across the internet

Khloe Kardashian has officially changed her son Tatum’s last name, one year after his birth. A Los Angeles county judge granted the name change for the baby – who Kardashian shares with ex Tristan Thompson – on 31 August, according to documents obtained by US Weekly. In June, the publication had first reported that Tatum’s last name was initially listed as “Kardashian” on his birth certificate. Now, the 13-month old has been granted a new surname, which is the same as his father’s, officially decreeing him “Tatum Thompson”. Similar to law in other states, California law allows parents to pick if they want their child to have their father or mother’s last name. Parents can also do the combination of the two, and give the baby a surname with a hyphen in between the two last names. The law states that whatever last name is picked will be permanent, as a court order is required to change the name. In July 2022, the former couple welcomed their child, Tatum, together via surrogate. They also share a five-year-old daughter, True. The arrival of the pair’s second baby came months after they ended their on-and-off relationship, when Thompson confirmed he fathered a son with fitness instructor Maralee Nichols. In the most recent season of The Kardashians, the Good American founder has also spoken candidly about raising her son. During an episode of season three, which aired in June, she admitted to feeling less bonded to her son born via surrogacy than her daughter True, who she birthed herself. “With True, it took me a couple of days to be like, okay, this is my daughter,” Kardashian said. “With him, it’s taken me months. I love him and I love kids but, I still don’t have that complete bond.” Kardashian added that she sometimes felt “guilty” that she hadn’t bonded with her son in the same way as her daughter. “I’m like, why isn’t it the same? But I know it will be and I know, like, I don’t treat him differently. I just question myself sometimes,” she explained. Despite her challenges and feelings about her son, Kardashian also acknowledged that she was being hard on herself. “I wish I wasn’t so critical of myself because I’m very kind to everyone else,” Kardashian said in her confessional. “I’m just not very kind to myself.” “But being a mom is truly one of the most magical experiences ever,” she added. In July, Kardashian took to Instagram to share a series of photos of Tatum in honour of his first birthday. She also included a sweet tribute about her relationship with her son, in which she expressed how ​“God knew [her] heart needed” him when he was born. “I am so proud to be your mommy. So proud of the love and laughter we have in our house. So proud of your beautiful, gentle, loving, infectious spirit. You light up every single room. There’s no denying that everyone smiles when they look at you!” she wrote. “Especially True, she is so proud to call you hers.” Read More Khloe Kardashian denies disrespecting Halle Berry and says ‘don’t tear me apart’ amid Tristan Thompson reports Khloe Kardashian reveals ex Tristan Thompson and his brother moved in with her after their mother died Kylie Jenner addresses the ‘misconceptions’ she’s had plastic surgery Khloe Kardashian officially changes son Tatum’s last name to Thompson Khloe Kardashian takes swipe at ‘hater’ for insulting sister Kim How did man who dodged theme parks due to his weight lose nearly 60kg?