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...
by Helen Davidson in Taipei, and Vincent Ni on (#5V07G)
Annual poll finds Taiwanese fear of conflict in coming months has fallen 15 percentage points in the past yearA declining number of Taiwanese people fear an imminent war with China, according to a new poll suggesting the rest of the world is far more worried than those at the centre of this potential geopolitical flashpoint.According to the poll, published on Thursday by Taiwan’s Commonwealth Magazine, 35.4% of respondents said they were worried about a military conflict breaking out over the Taiwan Strait within the next year, a decrease of nearly 15 percentage points on last year’s survey. The survey also found 59.7% of people do not think Beijing will ultimately use force to take Taiwan, while more than 35% believed it would. Continue reading...
Alleged sexual assault occurred when Duke of York, once second-in-line to the throne, was 41The stripping of Prince Andrew’s military roles and royal patronages marks a nadir for the Queen’s second son, since sexual assault accusations arose amid concern over his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It’s a fall from grace for the 61-year-old, who was once second-in-line to the throne. Continue reading...
Emily Lewis, 15, died on a rigid inflatable boat that hit a buoy in Southampton Water on 22 August 2020Two men have been charged after a 15-year-old girl was killed in a speedboating accident in the Solent.Emily Lewis died when the rigid inflatable boat (Rib) hit a buoy in Southampton Water on 22 August 2020. Twelve people were taken to hospital after the crash in which two people were thrown overboard. Continue reading...
Russia calls talks a ‘dead end’ and it becomes clear that troop build-up is not a bluff to achieve other endsThe Guardian’s world affairs editor assesses the outcome of three rounds of talks this week about the fate of Ukraine, involving Russia, the US, Nato and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).Did the talks achieve anything? Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5TZNR)
Developer asks for application to be taken off agenda, hours after fire safety concerns raised in GuardianA property developer bidding to build a 51-storey apartment tower with only one staircase has put its planning application on hold just hours after the Guardian exposed fire safety concerns.On Thursday evening Ballymore had planned to seek approval for one of the UK’s tallest residential buildings close to Canary Wharf in east London, but withdrew its application after fire safety experts branded as “madness” its plan to build more than 400 flats in a tower two-and-a-half times the height of Grenfell with just one staircase. Continue reading...
‘Snaking conveyer belts of sand’ are easily disrupted by human activities. Fixing them is no easy taskGraham Slade says Point Lonsdale front beach was a site of many firsts: he was four years old when he first walked on to it, seven years old when he was given his first surfboard and a teenager when he took his first steps into adulthood on its sand.“As you go through life, everything happened at Lonsdale first,” Slade says. “You went out to a lot of parties in your late teens, getting towards 20 years old, and sampled a few things. Continue reading...
Poland's foreign minister has warned that Europe is closer to war than it has been at any time in the last three decades, at the launch of his country's year-long chairing of the region's largest security organisation. Without naming Russia in his address on Thursday to envoys from the 57 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Zbigniew Rau mentioned tensions in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, all countries with active or frozen conflicts in which Russia has been alleged to be a party
Gone is the joy of series one, replaced with a cheerleading season truncated by Covid, stars that leave partway through the run and the darkness of child abuse allegationsIn retrospect, the first season of Cheer felt a little like the last good thing to happen to humanity. It blazed in out of nowhere in January 2020; a scrubbed-up, more accessible version of American football series Last Chance U, and effortlessly won over a world that didn’t know what was about to hit it. A documentary series about the world of competitive college cheerleading, it was not only spectacular to watch – brimming with sequences of young women being pinged miles into the air without a safety net – but packed full of heart. There was a joy to Cheer, and the grab bag of underdog stories it chose to tell.This week, the second series of Cheer dropped on Netflix and, well, the first season of Cheer still feels like the last good thing to happen to humanity. What a weird, unbalanced, curdled few hours of television this is. Just like the rest of the world, Cheer has spent the past two years growing shapeless and morose. It still qualifies as appointment TV, just don’t expect to actually enjoy any of it. Continue reading...
by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent on (#5TZG0)
Susan Sarandon and Mark Ruffalo among signatories to letter supporting Harry Potter actor accused of antisemitismMajor figures from the world of film, including Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Capaldi and Charles Dance have issued a statement in support of Emma Watson and Palestinian solidarity.Last week, Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, was accused of antisemitism after she posted an image on Instagram showing a photograph of a pro-Palestinian protest with the banner “solidarity is a verb” written across it. It was accompanied with a quote about the meaning of solidarity from the intersectional feminist scholar Sara Ahmed. Continue reading...
Lebanese film-makers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige explain how their experiences of war shaped their new film – and how art freed themOn 4 August 2020, a catastrophic explosion ripped through Beirut’s main port and into the city. In total, 218 people were killed. At the time, around 6pm, the artist and film-maker Joana Hadjithomas was in a cafe with a friend, around the corner from the studio she shares with her husband. The first thing she heard was a strange sound. “My friend and I just looked at each other. Instinctively, we went underneath the table. I curled up and protected my face.” As a teenager, she had lived through Lebanon’s civil war; taking cover was second nature, a survival reflex. Then came the massive blast.Afterwards, walking back to her apartment, she had no idea what was happening. An attack? An explosion? It was beyond comprehension. People were covered in blood; there was dust and rubble everywhere. “Wherever you looked, everything was destroyed. The scale was terrifying,” she says. In a state of shock, Hadjithomas had left her phone behind. When her husband, Khalil Joreige – frantic with worry – telephoned a couple of minutes later and a police officer answered, he feared the worst. Joreige tells the story with a shrug of helplessness, his face crumpling at the memory. Continue reading...
Sir Jonathan Van-Tam is stepping down as deputy chief medical officer for England at the end of March for a new role at the University of Nottingham. Described by the health secretary as a 'national treasure', Van-Tan takes with him a knack for analogies that have helped convey the twists and turns of the Covid crisis.Here are some of his most memorable moments in his role on and off the government podium
Suspects alleged to have been part of gang that carried out attacks on at least nine womenItalian police have detained two men accused of involvement in a series of sexual assaults during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Milan.Abdallah Bouguedra, 21, and Abdelrahman Ahmed Mahmoud Ibrahim, 18, are accused of “serious sexual assault accompanied by the robbery of mobile phones and handbags”, Milan’s acting prosecutor, Riccardo Targetti said. Continue reading...
Latest updates: health secretary says people can end isolation on day 6 after two negative LFTs; Tory party row continues as prime minister reportedly believes he did nothing wrong
The woman who managed weapons on the film set where a gun carried by Alec Baldwin was accidentally discharged, killing Halyna Hutchins, has said boxes of dummy rounds contained live bulletsHannah Gutierrez-Reed, who managed weapons and ammunition on the set of Rust, the western which saw live ammunition from the gun carried by lead actor and producer Alec Baldwin accidentally hit the film’s cinematographer and director, has filed a lawsuit against the supplier of guns and bullets.The lawsuit, against Seth Kenney and his company, PDQ Arm & Prop, alleges that boxes marked as inert dummy rounds actually included live bullets.
Leclerc destroying ‘dignity’ of profession for selling a baguette for 29 cents (24p)French bakers have taken aim at a major supermarket chain that is offering inflation-busting low prices for baguettes, saying the move will undermine competition in one of the country’s prized industries.The Leclerc group said in newspaper ads on Tuesday that “because of inflation, the average price of baguettes could increase significantly. That’s unthinkable”, vowing to cut into its profit margins to cap the cost of the signature French loaf at 29 euro cents (24p). Continue reading...
Aggrey Burke was the NHS’s first Black consultant psychiatrist. Rather than becoming a pillar of the establishment, he was forced to challenge it when he saw how other people of colour were treatedIn 1980 a man called Steven Thompson was just one week from completing a six-year prison sentence at Gartree prison in Leicestershire. Then the prison guards cut his hair off. Thompson was a Rastafarian and his dreadlocks were an important spiritual connection to his beliefs. So he resisted. It was taken as a sign of a violent psychiatric disorder – and, instead of going home, Thompson found himself committed to a secure hospital. His detention caused outrage in the Black community and, soon, Dr Aggrey Burke was asked to help getting him released.Burke – the first Black consultant psychiatrist in the NHS – remembers travelling through the snow to Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire. In a more than 40-year-long career he would fight tirelessly against discrimination in healthcare, sacrificing his own advancement to do so. He would take on racism in medical schools and offer psychological support to those traumatised by the infamous New Cross fire in 1981 that killed 14 young people. Yet Thompson’s case stuck in his mind as one that encapsulated many of the prejudices he had to battle. At the time, however, he just knew he would need to muster all his expertise and experience to convince the authorities Thompson was safe to release. Continue reading...
Prince Andrew’s accuser wants vindication of herself and her claims, says David BoiesThe Duke of York’s accuser Virginia Giuffre would be unlikely to accept a “purely financial settlement” to end her sexual assault civil lawsuit against the royal, her lawyer has said.David Boies was speaking after a US judge rejected Prince Andrew’s motion to have the civil case against him dismissed, paving the way for a possible civil trial in the autumn. Continue reading...
by Mostafa Rachwani (now) and Nino Bucci and Matilda on (#5TYMF)
Scott Morrison announces widespread easing of close contact isolation rules; no decision on Novak Djokovic visa status after Australian Open draw delayed; NSW records 92,264 Covid cases and 22 deaths; Victoria reports 37,169 cases and 25 deaths; Queensland records 14,914 cases, six deaths; ACT reports 1,020 cases, NT 550; more than 3,800 Covid hospitalisations. Follow all the day’s news
World news | The Guardian