New national police lead says forces must create a ‘call-out culture’ to root out sexism and misogynyPolicing attracts some men who want “to exert and coerce” vulnerable people, the new national police lead on violence against women has admitted, as she urged officers to create a “call-out culture” to tackle sexist and misogynistic behaviour.Deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth, who took up the post of national lead for violence against women and girls (VAWG) at the National Police Chiefs’ Council five months ago, said it was wrong to dismiss abusive, violent or sexist officers as a “few bad apples”. Continue reading...
Contenders in the running to play the star in a new biopic are facing gruelling training to land the partAge: It’s been going on for months.Appearance: Immersive course in singing like Madonna, dancing like Madonna and acting like Madonna. Continue reading...
What if Henry VIII’s wives were a pop group? The makers of the smash hit recall how Catherine of Aragon was very much Beyoncé, Anne Boleyn had Lily Allen vibes – while Jane Seymour was a sort of AdeleIn 2017, Cambridge University’s musical theatre society invited applications for an original show that it could take to the Edinburgh fringe. Toby Marlow and I were third years at the university, and had talked about doing a musical together for ages, so he applied, saying he would write a show with pop music and lots of women at its centre. Representation of women on stage was in the cultural conversation – later that year #MeToo happened. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Critical defence select committee report to come amid growing Tory unease over No 10’s planThe credibility of the government’s plan to put the Royal Navy in charge of coordinating efforts to control small boats in the Channel is expected to be questioned by an influential parliamentary committee.A report by the defence select committee, to be delivered shortly, will raise doubts over whether plans to put the Royal Navy in charge have been rigorously tested. Continue reading...
Critics compare Israeli military actions of Palestinian territories with Russian invasion of Ukraine but pro-Israel groups dismiss allegations as false parallelsThe US and some of its European allies are facing accusations of double standards for supporting sanctions and international war crimes investigations against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine while blocking them over Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.But pro-Israel groups in the US have dismissed the allegations by accusing critics of exploiting Ukrainian suffering to draw false parallels. Continue reading...
The official London tube map has only three stops named after women. Together with the actor Emma Watson and the author Rebecca Solnit, I’ve been working on a feminist alternative. Here’s the story behind our contribution to International Women’s DayWhen I was a baby feminist, I would argue with friends that public space was political. I had been radicalised by my teenage years, sick to the back teeth of street harassment from men who seemed to think that the streets were theirs to roam freely, while women were relegated to decoration. It wasn’t a regular occurrence, but it happened enough times to enrage me. Walking home from school in London, in uniform, I had been followed, had my arm snatched and had been approached at least once by a man who displayed stalking tendencies. As I grew older, I understood these actions as displays of dominance and I was disgusted. Alongside my indignation, I was crushingly disappointed. I had been raised in this city and hated that this kind of behaviour was an impediment to my teenage desire for autonomy and freedom.I had been navigating public transport by myself for years at that point, and it took me everywhere I wanted to go. Once I had exhausted my immediate surroundings on foot, I’d take the Piccadilly line to gigs at the now bulldozed Astoria on Charing Cross Road. I’d jump on the Hammersmith and City line, a portal to dancing all day at Notting Hill carnival. The Circle line made me feel like an intellectual in the museums of South Kensington. There was no option back then to outsource travel plans to a clever little app, so in order to go anywhere I, like everyone else, would have to study the tube map to find out how to get to my destination. If I was feeling brave, I’d sometimes jump on the tube at Turnpike Lane and work it out as I went along, peering at the mini maps inside the train carriage and looming awkwardly over whoever was sitting in the seat beneath. I didn’t need a car. The map in my pocket opened up my city. Continue reading...
by Nyasha Chingono in Mbare. Photographs by Cynthia R on (#5WTRW)
Basil Matsika hopes his joyful murals of Mbare’s music and sports stars will inspire others to look beyond the area’s poverty and crimeStreet artist Basil Matsika paints murals of local musicians and daily life in the streets of Mbare, one of Zimbabwe’s oldest townships, in the capital Harare. With his brush and paint jar, he says he communicates deep sentiments of hope amid the overwhelming landscape of poverty.While many see Mbare as a crime-ridden neighbourhood, Matsika, 40, chooses to see beauty in the grimy, patched walls of the Matapi flats, which have become his canvas for his giant murals. Continue reading...
We throw out £2.1bn-worth of fresh fruit and veg each year because it’s mouldy, gone soft or is out of dateAbout £2.1bn-worth of fresh fruit and vegetables is thrown away in UK homes each year because it has gone soft, mouldy or is out of date. Continue reading...
by Emma Graham-Harrison in Pochaiv, western Ukraine on (#5WTPB)
War has sharpened the split between Ukraine and Russia’s Orthodox churches, with some historic sites in Ukraine still loyal to MoscowAs war kicked off in Ukraine, soldiers at a military airstrip in the west of the country went hunting for the origin of a laser pointer they feared was marking out targets on their base.They found it in a nearby church. Behind the thick walls of the building in Kolomyia, run by monks loyal to Moscow, they also discovered a large stockpile of food and alcohol, and three guns. Continue reading...
In his latest address Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the west to do more as he spoke of the destruction across Ukraine and the suffering faced by his people. 'We will not forgive. We will not forget,' he said. 'We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land.'In Irpin, a town about 25km (16 miles) north-west of the capital of Kyiv, men, women and children trying to escape heavy fighting in the area were forced to take cover when missiles struck nearby, according to witnesses
Tugan Sokhiev resigns without stating his position, saying he could not choose between ‘my beloved Russian and beloved French musicians’The Bolshoi Theatre’s music director and principal conductor Tugan Sokhiev announced his resignation Sunday, saying he felt under pressure due to calls to take a position on the Ukraine conflict.The Russian said in a statement he was resigning “with immediate effect” from his post at the Moscow theatre, as well as his equivalent position at France’s Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Continue reading...
International Atomic Energy Agency says Russian military orders of staff at nuclear plant violate international safety protocolsStaff at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being told what to do by the Russian military commander who seized the site last week, in violation of international safety protocols.The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed “grave concern” at the situation at the six-reactor plant, the largest in Europe. The agency was told by the Ukrainian nuclear regulator that “any action of plant management – including measures related to the technical operation of the six reactor units – requires prior approval by the Russian commander”. Continue reading...
Analysis: With Tory MPs calling for him to quit and a police investigation into lockdown parties, the prime minister seemed to be in perilOne month ago, Boris Johnson’s premiership seemed to be in peril. “Coming into work felt like going to a funeral every day,” one No 10 aide recalled. “You could feel the guilt in the building from people who thought ‘we’ve let him down’.”Faced with a trickle of Tory MPs openly calling for the prime minister to quit and a police investigation into lockdown parties, the politician who had always managed to wriggle free appeared this time to have no way out. Continue reading...
The outpouring of sympathy and help for Ukrainian refugees has prompted debate about European attitudes to identity and ethnicityIn 1857, the English poet and Chartist leader Ernest Jones wrote a series of articles in the People’s Paper about the “Indian Mutiny” of that year. It was, he observed, no “mutiny” but a “national insurrection” that Britons should support as much as they had supported similar struggles in Europe. Britons were “on the side of Poland” when it “struggled for its freedom against Russia”. If Poland was “right”, Jones insisted, then “so is Hindostan”.I was reminded of his argument as I read and listened to some of the commentary about Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. The invasion is brutal and unacceptable, an assault on democracy and sovereignty. We should oppose it just as we should oppose the Saudi assault on Yemen. We should support the people of Ukraine just as we should the people of Syria. Continue reading...
Artists say firm with murky ethical record is stealing their designsVanessa Bowman paints the world around her: the 19th-century village church, her back garden, the leaves on the trees in the fields where she walks her dog.Once she has chosen a scene from her rural Dorset idyll, she puts brush to canvas, sometimes poring over the details for days in her studio. Continue reading...
A scientific experiment hopes to restore vital nutrients to the ocean by using fake excrement that would once have been produced by the endangered mammalIn a few weeks an international group of scientists will launch an unusual marine research project. They will dust the surface of the Indian Ocean with artificial whale faeces.The aim of this excremental experiment is straightforward. It is to determine if it is possible to reboot marine ecosystems that have been starved of nutrients and in the process restore dwindling fish populations. It is also hoped the project will help in the battle against the climate crisis. Continue reading...
Nicole Flender talks attending New York’s fame school; living in Manhattan Plaza and supporting her children’s careersIn November, when Pauline Chalamet debuted in The Sex Lives of College Girls as Kimberly, many viewers were surprised to learn that Timothée Chalamet had an older sister, let alone one who acts. Although Pauline had made her feature film debut alongside Pete Davidson in Judd Apatow’s comedy The King of Staten Island a year before, it was her leading role in the HBO Max comedy-drama series that served as her big break. Pauline’s humorous performance as a dorky, sheltered, school-loving college student was sweet and tender and with the show having just been renewed for a new season, it also solidified the Chalamet siblings’ standing as a force to be reckoned with.Such is the cultural positioning of the Chalamets, that when I meet their mother, Nicole Flender, on a gray Tuesday afternoon at The Drama Bookshop in Manhattan, we lower our voices when mentioning Timothée to avoid being overheard by anyone shopping in the bookstore. Continue reading...
The New York congresswoman is the subject of an admiring biographical portrait. Love her or not, her story is impressiveThis book should have been titled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez But Were Afraid to Ask.Whether you love her or loathe her, the former Sandy Ocasio has an irresistible story, told here in a brisk four-chapter narrative followed by brief sections on everything from a make-up video she made for Vogue to her evisceration of Mark Zuckerberg at a congressional hearing. Continue reading...
As happened with Covid, the compulsive need to keep up with the Russian invasion is taking a toll on our mental healthThe pace of the crisis in Ukraine has created a brain-tangling complexity for anyone trying to understand what is going on. Now doomscrolling is back in ways not seen since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.Mental health experts are warning that public engagement comes with a cost in terms of anxiety that should not be ignored. Paul Salkovskis, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, who worked on measures to help people deal with Covid-related anxiety, said: “Clearly there are some people who are already anxious, who will be significantly more anxious, as happened with Covid – we saw a big increase in some subtypes of anxiety in the clinic. There will be some of that with this situation, but I don’t think it’s going to be the dominant response.” Continue reading...
by Caitlin Cassidy (now) and Graham Readfearn (earlie on (#5WSWA)
More than 70,000 people in NSW covered by 55 evacuation orders as Sydney and Central Coast face more heavy rain; extreme heatwave warnings for north Queensland as severe storms develop in south-east; magnitude 3.8 earthquake at Mount Barker near Adelaide; NSW records five Covid deaths, Victoria four and South Australia and Queensland two apiece. Follow all the day’s news
by Angela Giuffrida in Roscigno Vecchia on (#5WT0T)
Abandoned hamlet’s last remaining resident is now its unofficial guide. Our writer joins him for a tourGiuseppe Spagnuolo wakes up at about 6am each day, eats the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner for breakfast, greets the stray cats he calls his “security guards” and clambers down the steps of his crumbling home to splash his face with water from the fountain in the square. Occasionally, he walks up to the next village, if his “aches and pains” allow, for coffee in the bar.For 25 years, Spagnuolo has been the only inhabitant in Roscigno Vecchia, a long-abandoned hamlet 400m up a mountain in the Cilento area of Italy’s southern Campania region. “If you’ve experienced the school of life like I have, then you can easily live this way,” the 74-year-old said, sitting in front of the fire in his kitchen, which is cluttered with pots, pans, bottles of wine, tinned tomatoes, cheese and hanging salamis. Continue reading...
From its biggest private house to a disused tube station, London has long been an attractive place for the Russian president’s cronies to buy property. Their ill-gotten wealth permeated the capital at the expense of us all
Practice saying self-revelatory thoughts to another person without knowing how they are going to land, says Philippa Perry. And tune into your own feelingsThe question My partner broke up with me after being together throughout the pandemic and, at the end, part of her reasoning was that she felt she “didn’t really know who I am”.I recently started seeing someone new and, although we’ve only known each other for a month, she said the same thing unprompted. Truthfully, I feel the same way about myself. I’m 30 and I’ve always felt subdued and unable to be expressive. I don’t know how to be authentically me. How do I find myself? Continue reading...
by Samantha Lock (now), Joanna Walters , Miranda Brya on (#5WS9Y)
Biden says US and allies have ‘raised the costs’ on Russia over its aggression, as credit card giants Visa and Mastercard halt Russian business operations
by Ed Aarons, Romain Molina and Suzanne Wrack on (#5WSVB)
Over the past few years, allegations of abuse have been reported from a number of countries and there is a sense that this is just the beginningBelow is a list of countries where allegations of sexual abuse have been reported in the past few years. Not all of the accusations have been tested through investigations. Continue reading...
Ukrainian soldiers shoot down a plane and helicopter as Russia bombs multiple civilian targetsUkraine claimed to have destroyed more Russian forces on Saturday, as the Kremlin continued to bomb civilian targets on the tenth day of its invasion, and a plan to evacuate residents from the besieged city of Mariupol fell apart because of hostilities.The defence ministry in Kyiv said its soldiers had shot down an enemy helicopter and a warplane, capturing its pilot. They also launched a successful counter-attack in the Kharkiv region, seizing equipment. The city, Ukraine’s second biggest, has been under ferocious Russian bombardment. Continue reading...