Ben Wallace issues second warning this week as Liz Truss accuses Moscow of waging ‘disinformation campaign’An incursion by Russia into Ukraine would violate the “most basic freedoms and sovereignty”, the defence secretary has said following a visit to Scandinavia.Issuing a second warning in a week to Moscow, Ben Wallace said there would be “consequences” of any Russian aggression towards Ukraine. Continue reading...
The Harry Potter actor on a play about teen depression, his George Harrison fix, and the Lin-Manuel Miranda film he’s obsessed withBorn in Surrey in 1987, actor Tom Felton rose to fame playing Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. His other film roles include Anna and the King, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Amma Asante’s Belle and A United Kingdom. He is also a musician, and is one of the founders of Six String Productions, a recording company devoted to signing young musical artists. He stars opposite Samantha Morton in Sky original Save the Cinema, about a Welsh community’s battle to save their local theatre from demolition. Continue reading...
The footballer, 40, on playing for Dulwich Hamlet, worrying about dementia, fans teasing him for being so tall and writing poems for his wifeMy first love was Italian football. It was so flamboyant. Gianluca Vialli was my idol; he had this effortless style. I was also transfixed by the Football Italia show on Channel 4, James Richardson sitting by a swimming pool with his pink Gazzetta dello Sport and his tiny little cup. I said to Dad, “Why is his cup so small?” He had to explain it was an espresso, not a tiny cup of bog-standard tea.I can be romantic. When I proposed to Ab [Abbey Clancy, Crouch’s wife] in a villa in Ibiza I set up candles all the way downstairs so she could follow them to me. I once whisked her away for a weekend in Paris and surprised her with a new outfit each night. Not all of it was perfect, but I tried my best. When I played football I used to write little poems for her and leave them around the house. I should still do that really. Continue reading...
Lawyers for Duke of York argue Virginia Giuffre ‘may suffer from false memories’, court documents showLawyers for the Duke of York want to question his accuser’s husband and her psychologist as part of his civil sexual abuse case, after arguing that she “may suffer from false memories”.Witness accounts are being sought from Virginia Giuffre’s partner, Robert Giuffre, and Dr Judith Lightfoot, according to court documents. Continue reading...
Vigils continue to be held for 23-year-old teacher murdered while on a run in Tullamore, Country OffalyRunners across the island of Ireland paused in memory of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy on Saturday, with further vigils organised following the murder of the teacher.Irish police are continuing to hunt for the killer of Murphy, who was found dead after going for a run on the banks of the Grand Canal in Tullamore, County Offaly. Continue reading...
A women’s yoga and fell walking break in the Welsh borders leaves our writer with aching muscles but a heart full of joyBruce Chatwin was 15 when he first cycled through the Vale of Ewyas, a place he would later refer to as “one of the emotional centres of his life”. Wordsworth and Turner also loved this rough knuckle of mountains abutting the England-Wales border. I was 20 when I first visited, and was so smitten by the swooping hills that I leapt out of the car and ran barefoot up Hay Bluff, seized by a reckless delirium.Two decades later I’m on a new yoga and fell walking weekend here, with Chatwin’s beloved valley unfurling below. The packing list had included sun cream – but this is Wales, in winter, and the weather isn’t playing ball. Rain pitter-patters on still-green leaves. Boots squelch in oily mud. Mist shrouds a seam of oaks. Continue reading...
Streets and buildings flooded in Pacific nation’s main island following latest eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apaiPeople have been forced to flee their homes, and streets and buildings have flooded, as tsunami waves crashed into Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu, following a huge underwater volcano explosion.The eruption at 0410 GMT on Friday of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano, located about 65km (40 miles) north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, caused a 1.2-metre tsunami, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said. Continue reading...
by Omar Wally in Allunhari and Emmanuel Akinwotu on (#5V1V9)
People in two tiny West Africa towns are stunned by the deaths of sisters, nephews and mothers in a tight-knit immigrant communityEarly on Sunday morning, Ebrima Dukureh, 60, answered a phone call at his home in the Gambian town of Allunhari.It was his nephew, Haji Dukureh, 49, calling from New York City, to check in – as he often did. The two men caught up on news, asked after each other’s families and exchanged blessings. Continue reading...
The Handmaid’s Tale actor on her crush on Clint Eastwood and selling frozen food over the phoneBorn in Massachusetts, Ann Dowd, 65, appeared in the films Lorenzo’s Oil and Philadelphia, and had various roles in the TV series Law & Order. She received award nominations for her performances in the 2012 film Compliance and the HBO series The Leftovers. Since 2017, she has played Aunt Lydia in the drama series The Handmaid’s Tale, winning an Emmy. Her more recent movies include Hereditary and Rebecca; her latest, Mass, is in cinemas and on Sky Cinema from January 20. She is married to actor Lawrence Arancio; they have three children and live in New York City.Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?
by Daryl Mersom (words), Marian Chytka and agencies ( on (#5V1S5)
This year’s rally once again returned to Saudi Arabia where 750 competitors in 430 vehicles traversed more than 8,000km over 12 stages. The rally started and ended in Jeddah, going through canyons and cliffs in the Neom region, passing by the Red Sea coastline, into stretches of dunes surrounding the capital Riyadh.Click here to check out images of the rally from yesteryearFrom Jeddah to Riyadh and everywhere in between, this has been a visually spectacular year at the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. Fourteen days of dunes, fast straight tracks, rocky sections, and cliff backdrops. Titles have been contested and first-time entrants have been broken in. All of the contestants were hoping for glory in the vast desert landscape where mistakes are rarely forgiven, but few claimed it.The dust settles on the world’s toughest rallying event and a variety of stories emerge from the Saudi desert. Nani Roma, the seasoned veteran who has won the Dakar on both a motorbike and in a car, showed us how far biofuels have come in recent years.Bahrain Raid Extreme driver Nani Roma and co-driver Alex Haro Bravo drive their Prodrive Hunter T1 on Stage 7 from Riyadh to Al Dawadimi. Photograph: Marian Chytka Continue reading...
Line of Duty has made her primetime royalty and one of the UK’s most watched actors. Now Vicky McClure is paying it forward to a new generation of working-class talentVicky McClure has just made me a cup of tea and now we’re on to the important business of weighing up just how famous she has become. The Line of Duty and This Is England star reckons she’s a long way from being an A-lister, insisting her fame is “a bit more like a household-ey name? Maybe in the same vein as a soap?” It’s the kind of take you might expect from the grounded Midlander who, despite starring in the most-watched BBC drama since records began, keeps things very real. And she also makes a great cup of tea.We’re talking in the unflashy front room of her cosy house in Nottingham. An ordinary house on an ordinary suburban street; no thick electronic gate, no hovering publicist or personal assistant. Our only (unseen) company is McClure’s fiance, fellow actor Jonny Owen, who’s pottering around upstairs. Oh, and the builder who knocks on the front door – they’re having work done. Continue reading...
Lacey Haynes and Flynn Talbot want to improve the world’s love life – starting by doing it live on air in every episodeLacey Haynes is a women’s “intuitive healer”, and guides couples in yoga-informed “elevated sex”. When she opens her front door, the first thing I notice about the Canadian podcaster is her fashionable faux fur slippers and chic blunt fringe. Where is the western wellness guru uniform of linen tunic, elephant-print trousers and culturally inappropriate head jewellery, I wonder?Inside the living room, I spot the hot-pink sofa that Haynes’ Australian husband, Flynn Talbot, a men’s life coach and fellow elevated sex practitioner, calls “love island”. Fans of their podcast – Lacey and Flynn Have Sex – will know it as one of many locations around their house where they take the title literally, recording themselves having sex in the bedroom, on the kitchen barstool, and beyond. Continue reading...
by Lisa Cox and Tory Shepherd (earlier) on (#5V1BS)
Tennis star’s lawyers call immigration minister’s view that he could excite anti-vaccination sentiment ‘irrational’; NSW reports 20 deaths and 48,768 cases, Victoria 23 deaths and 25,526 positive cases, Qld six deaths and about 20,000 cases and SA four deaths and 4,349 cases. This blog is now closed
The acclaimed journalist talks about life before Watergate, as portrayed in his new book Chasing History, and life after TrumpCarl Bernstein is crying. He slips an index finger behind his spectacles to push away a tear. He repeats the action to wipe his other eye.Nearly six decades have passed since Bernstein, a young newsman in a hurry, was told by a colleague that President John F Kennedy was dead. But the gut punch of that moment surfaces as if it were yesterday. “I still have trouble with it,” Bernstein admits, quickly regaining his composure. “It’s very strange.” Continue reading...
Thousands of people still in jail after protests while behind-the-scenes power struggle continuesKazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who at the height of unrest last week said he had ordered troops to shoot to kill without warning, has spent this week taking a softer line and promising genuine reform.However, with thousands of people still in detention and a behind-the-scenes power struggle still not fully resolved, many have expressed scepticism. Continue reading...
Two tactical guided missiles hit their target, state media said, hours after Pyongyang accused US of ‘provocation’North Korea’s third weapons test this month involved the firing drill of a railway-borne missile, state media KCNA has said.South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said it had detected what it presumed were two short-range ballistic missiles launched eastward on Friday from North Pyongan province on the north-west coast of North Korea. Continue reading...
Thousands have gathered in towns and cities across Ireland after the 'senseless' killing of the 23-year-old teacher, with echoes of the national reckoning that was sparked in the UK last year by the murder of Sarah Everard. Murphy was killed on Wednesday afternoon while going for a run along the banks of the Grand Canal in Tullamore in County Offaly
Killing of 23-year-old in County Offaly has provoked outpouring of grief and anger in Ireland and beyondThousands have gathered in the town of Tullamore in Ireland as a vigil was held for Ashling Murphy.Other memorials were also held across Ireland after the “senseless” killing of the 23-year-old teacher, with echoes of the national reckoning that was sparked in the UK last year by the murder of Sarah Everard. Continue reading...
Sundas Alam’s threats led to Shah's children fleeing home and innocent family being arrested at gunpointA woman whose death threats led to an MP’s children fleeing their home in the middle of the night, and an innocent family being arrested at gunpoint, has been jailed for three and a half years.Bradford West MP Naz Shah has described how she rang 999 about “an immediate firearms threat” in a disguised email sent by Sundas Alam in April last year that threatened her with a “bullet in her head”. Continue reading...
Southwark Police said multiple people have raised concerns the area lacks CCTV and lightingAn 18-year-old woman was subjected to an “appalling and upsetting” rape by two masked men who approached hernear a London overground station.The Metropolitan police have appealed for witnesses after the attack near Peckham Rye station. Continue reading...
Prince Charles has refused to comment on his brother, Andrew, being stripped of his honorary military titles and royal roles in charities and patronages. The prince ignored a reporter's question during an engagement in Scotland to view the devastation caused by Storm Arwen in late November
A rare joint EU-UK statement says talks will continue next week to deal with outstanding issuesLiz Truss, the foreign secretary, said there was “a deal to be done” over the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland after “constructive talks” with her EU counterpart raised hopes of less rancorous relations with Brussels.The notably sunny prognosis followed a first meeting with Maroš Šefčovič, the European commissioner responsible for Brexit issues, at Chevening, the cabinet minister’s official country residence in Kent. Continue reading...
After breakups, breakdowns, stalkers and worse, Chan Marshall has rewritten her bleakest lyrics and recorded an album of highly personal covers. ‘We all need sweetness,’ she saysChan Marshall is sitting cross-legged on a bed, crying. It’s a sniffly, unselfconscious kind of crying, tears smudging sooty eyeshadow. Thirty years into her often wayward career as the US singer-songwriter Cat Power, she is crying because in a few weeks’ time she is 50 and she can’t believe she made it, that life turned out OK, that she’s happy. At least, happier than she was when she turned 30, the day her then boyfriend “stood me up”. Or her 40th, when she felt controlled in the relationship she was in.“He was involved with this church,” she explains. “I wasn’t allowed to have friends. Or a party. So … hmm. I’m so sorry.” She shakes her head, reaches across the bed and clutches my hand. “It’s heavy, dude.” She takes a bolstering tug on a cigarette. “The 20s were so fucking difficult, like: ‘Oh, now I gotta do this some more?’” she carries on. “Turning 40 was: ‘Uuuurgh, well I made it this far, but it’s got to get better.’” Continue reading...
She was a cartoon beach beauty. He was a tattooed drummer. As the story of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s stolen sex tape is turned into tense TV, we remember the events that changed celebrity culture for everBy Christmas 1995, it was moderately common knowledge that a “sex tape” existed of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, privately filmed on their honeymoon that year, after a whirlwind 96-hour romance. As the star of Baywatch, Anderson was so globally famous that other, also famous TV shows had storylines about her. Lee, the Mötley Crüe drummer, was also extremely well known, mainly as a sex, drugs and rock’n’roll poster boy, partly for mooning whenever he went on stage.Their union, and its impact, was a molecular chemistry kind of affair; like oxygen and hydrogen, each, alone, was a powerful element, but combined they were altogether more culturally powerful – her eroticism slightly neutralised by marriage, his trouble-seeking rendered a bit safer beside her all-American (actually Canadian) smile. Continue reading...
Prime minister’s lies catch up with him and Covid still lurks waiting to deliver two red linesIt’s the sheer randomness that grinds you down. On Christmas Day, my wife and I were – fingers crossed – congratulating ourselves on everything having gone according to plan. Our daughter, Anna, and her husband, Robert, had managed to avoid the Omicron variant in the US – both were triple-vaxxed – and been able to fly over to the UK; and our son, Robbie, and his girlfriend, Laila, had also managed to get their boosters, escape Covid, and come up from Brighton to stay with us. So we had been together as a family for the first time in more than two years. Continue reading...
As her breakthrough album Born to Die turns 10, we pick the best of an artist whose beautiful, damned aesthetic changed the course of popApparently inspired by the suicide of a friend and remixed by Cedric Gervais into that rarest of things – a party-starting Lana Del Rey banger – Summertime Sadness was a hook-laden highlight of her second album Born to Die, later becoming a key text in the #prettywhenyoucry “sad girl” aesthetic Del Rey inadvertently spawned. Continue reading...
We have a Spice Girls calendar on the door and an old VHS player – I watch my Vicar of Dibley box set on itI was born in 1998, at the tail end of the decade I love. Titanic was in cinemas, Britney Spears released … Baby One More Time, Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls and Apple released the bright turquoise iMac computer.I was too young to appreciate those things, but my first home in Mansfield was full of 90s decor. I loved the fun of it. The hallway was decorated in tongue and groove wood panelling, with green and terracotta wallpaper. We had a tangerine kitchen with bottle green appliances, and my bedroom was covered in suns and moons. Homes weren’t decorated for Instagram then. People were less self-conscious and weren’t afraid to experiment. I moved house about 15 times during my childhood but anything that harked back to the 90s felt like home. Continue reading...
One of the stars of Guillermo del Toro’s new noir, he has been a captivating character actor for 40 years, but is rarely put up before the press. We find out why …Fugitives facing the firing squad have looked more relaxed than David Strathairn does right now. One of the most perspicacious character actors of the past 40 years, he has been exceptional so often on screen that any attempt to list the highlights runs the risk of simply transcribing his IMDb page: Nomadland, LA Confidential, The River Wild, Sneakers, a batch of rigorous dramas by his longtime friend John Sayles (including Matewan and Limbo), a fling with Carmella on The Sopranos, a career-best performance as a predatory teacher in the indie gem Blue Car, and an Oscar nomination for Good Night, and Good Luck. Today the 72-year-old, who resembles a lean, lined Cary Grant, is sitting bolt upright and strangely far from the camera as he talks via video call from New York. Or rather, doesn’t talk. I have just asked him a question that he considers irrelevant, even impertinent, and he has clammed up.To think, it all started so well. Discussing his new movie, Guillermo del Toro’s 1940s-set noir thriller Nightmare Alley, Strathairn is in his element. In this adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s novel, filmed once before, in 1947, he plays Pete, a soused, weather-beaten mentalist who performs a mind-reading act with his wife, Zeena (Toni Collette), at an insalubrious travelling carnival. The doggedly cheerful couple have seen better days. “Pete was at the top of his game many years earlier when they were in Paris,” he reflects. “He has this idea that he was once a great mentalist on the most renowned stages. It’s an interesting contrast to where we find him in the film.” Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5V0J3)
Top concern is labour shortages as 28% of manufacturers say trade with EU has increasedManufacturers in Northern Ireland have ranked the post-Brexit arrangements for trade in Northern Ireland as the least of the challenges facing their businesses, according to a quarterly industry survey, with 28% saying trade with the EU has increased over the last year.The top concern was listed as labour shortages caused by the pandemic but also the end of freedom of movement that prevents EU citizens living in border counties in the republic of Ireland crossing into Northern Ireland for work. Continue reading...
Pre-Covid the country battled poor learning outcomes, now experts fear fee rises and school closures will see many more children miss outThe gate that once proudly displayed the name of Godwins primary school in Kampala has been removed. The compound, where pupils played at break time, is now a parking area for trucks ferrying goods to the nearby market, while the classrooms have been turned into a travellers’ lodge.Uganda’s schools were ordered to reopen on Monday 10 January, after nearly two years of closure – the longest school shutdown in the world – but not all were able to welcome pupils back. Godwins, in Kalerwe in Kawempe division, is one of the many schools that will never reopen. It had been in existence for 20 years catering to children whose parents work in nearby Kalerwe market. Continue reading...
Giuffre says she will ‘continue to expose truth’ and ‘seek justice from those who hurt me and others’Virginia Giuffre has praised a court ruling enabling her sexual assault civil lawsuit against the Duke of York to proceed to trial and said she will “continue to expose the truth”.Giuffre wrote on Twitter she was “pleased” with the ruling, adding: “I’m glad I will have the chance to continue to expose the truth & I am deeply grateful to my extraordinary legal team. Continue reading...
The skier counts Dudley ‘Tal’ Stokes as his mentor and hopes to use him as inspiration with Jamaica at the Winter OlympicsThe spirit of Cool Runnings is set to be rekindled next month when Benjamin Alexander, a 38-year-old from Northampton, will become the first athlete to represent Jamaica in an alpine skiing event at the Winter Olympics.Alexander only took up skiing in 2015 and has no full time coach, but he secured qualification for the Beijing Games on Wednesday when he finished seventh in the giant slalom at the Cape Verde National Ski Championships in Liechtenstein. Continue reading...
Since he left Downing Street, Boris Johnson’s former adviser has been setting out his worldview – and settling scores – on his Substack. Could it help us understand the most notorious man in British politics?Who is the most interesting writer about politics in Britain today? No question, it’s Dominic Cummings. The Substack blog he started in June last year is not cheap – £10 a month for an erratic and irregular output via email – but it’s worth it. Whenever and whatever he does post, you can be sure it will contain plenty of extraordinary ideas, unexpected insights and eye-popping indiscretions. Cummings appears to have little or no filter on his thoughts, with the result that his writing offers as clear a view into the dark heart of contemporary politics as is available anywhere. He has no time for any of the usual pieties. What you get is a voracious intellect – Cummings is interested in everything from 19th-century German history to quantum physics – coupled with a tireless curiosity about anything that lies outside the conventional wisdom. It’s a revelation.As Boris Johnson’s former right-hand man – and the architect of Brexit and the Tories’ 2019 election landslide – Cummings is nothing if not divisive. Since Johnson fired him in late 2020, Cummings has turned on the prime minister and made it his mission to force him out of office. If your enemy’s enemy is your friend, this makes it hard for many of Cummings’ former critics to know what to think of him now. Continue reading...
Two men also die in separate incident after gunshots heard in MordiallocA six-year-old girl has died in hospital after a stabbing that claimed the life of a woman in Melbourne’s north.The young girl and a 39-year-old woman, believe to be her mother, were both found with critical injuries at a home in Mill Park at about 7.50pm on Thursday. Continue reading...
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