When teenage LA punks the Linda Lindas went viral, they caught the attention of Amy Poehler, Jimmy Kimmel and original riot grrrl, Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, who joins them for a cross-generational chinwagIn May, the US punk band the Linda Lindas went viral with a performance of their no-holds-barred track Racist, Sexist Boy. Written in response to a real-life incident in which drummer Mila de la Garza was racially harassed by a classmate, the song alternates between sludgy punk and brisk, hardcore thrash, topped with cathartic, defiant lyrics: “You have racist, sexist joys / We rebuild what you destroy.” What made the performance even more striking was its setting among the usually hushed bookshelves of the Los Angeles Public Library.On the back of that viral hit (currently at 4.3m views on Twitter), the teenage Los Angeles quartet – Mila and her sister Lucia (guitar), their cousin Eloise Wong (bass), and longtime friend Bela Salazar (guitar) – have signed to Epitaph Records, recorded their debut album, due in 2022, and released a snappy, and snappily titled, punk-pop single Oh!. Continue reading...

Exclusion of junta chief Min Aung Hlaing ‘necessary decision to uphold Asean’s credibility’South-east Asian countries will invite a non-political representative from Myanmar to a regional summit this month, delivering an unprecedented snub to the military leader who led a coup against an elected civilian government in February.The decision taken by foreign ministers from the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean), at an emergency meeting on Friday night, marks a rare bold step for the consensus-driven bloc, which has traditionally favoured a policy of engagement and non-interference. Continue reading...

In our new column, in which we make nice things happen for nice people, Victoria Cairns moves from litter-picking the streets to cleaning up the waterwaysIt was a turtle that changed everything. Victoria Cairns, 45, a headteacher from Derbyshire, was diving in Bali in 2008 when she saw one of the island’s famous turtles. It loomed towards her in the crystal clear water, and she was delighted – until she saw the plastic bag in its mouth. “I just thought: ‘Oh God, we are parasites’,” Cairns remembers. “Humans are at the top of the food chain and we’re having a devastating impact on the environment.”She set up anti-litter Instagram account, @plastic_reduction, to raise awareness of the damage caused by plastic pollution. She regularly litter-picks around her neighbourhood. “She’s done amazing work keeping the area clean, tidy and beautiful,” says friend and fellow litter-picker Laura Clifton, who co-runs @plastic_reduction. Continue reading...

Jonathan Perel’s low-key doc focuses on the companies, still in business, which collaborated with the killings and torture that followed 1976 coupJonathan Perel has made a stealthily powerful one-man documentary about corporate involvement in human rights atrocities during Argentina’s military dictatorship after the 1976 coup. It’s an account of how companies assisted in state terror: the kidnap, torture and murder of employees considered subversive, mostly trade unionists or political activists.Perel’s approach is startlingly – almost maddeningly – plain. Like a private detective, he parks his car outside 25 companies exposed by a 2005 government report about corporate accountability and the repression of workers during the regime. Over the footage he films from his car documenting the mundane comings and goings outside the buildings today, Perel calmly reads extracts from the report’s case studies. Continue reading...

Court documents shed new light on Yasir al-Rumayyan’s relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin SalmanYasir al-Rumayyan, the new non-executive chairman of Newcastle United, was involved in a controversial “anti-corruption” campaign in Saudi Arabia that included the transfer of assets on behalf of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.Details of Rumayyan’s role – including the transfer of a charter jet company to the Public Investment Fund (PIF), where he serves as governor – are contained in court documents that shed light on his relationship with Prince Mohammed. Continue reading...

The princess is now a constant presence on our screens, from a camp musical to The Crown. Such a blank canvas is a dream for directors and a nightmare for actors, writes Hadley FreemanThe first imitation I ever saw of Diana, Princess of Wales was in my bedroom when I was five. It was a Diana Bride doll, ordered by my mother from a catalogue, although with her rictus smile and huge helmet of hair she looked more like Nancy Reagan. The details didn’t matter: she had the vague outlines of princess – big glittery jewels, big glittery eyes – so I could project whatever I wanted on to her, and I did; I played with her so much I snapped off her right foot.This is a true story, but if the metaphor within it feels too heavy-handed, then I would advise you to keep clear of the many films and TV shows about Diana, none of which shy away from the obvious metaphorical nudge and shove. In his eulogy for his sister at her funeral in 1997, Earl Spencer described her as “the most hunted person of the modern age”. Screenwriters since have taken that description and run pell-mell with it: in the last season of The Crown, she was a beautiful stag; in Spencer – the new film by Pablo Larraín, starring Kristen Stewart as Diana – she is a pheasant, “beautiful but not very bright”, as she sighs sadly. Both the stag and pheasant are, of course, hunted by the evil Windsors, because that has been the narrative around Diana ever since her death, even though not even the Daily Express still believes they actually killed her. Continue reading...

Activist James Cromwell, 81, who plays Ewan Roy, says his role was rewritten to reflect his politicsActor James Cromwell says he demanded his character on Succession take a moral stand against his unscrupulous, ultra-rich family – and hopes the hit show does not normalise the abuses of power and privilege as The Apprentice did for Donald Trump.The 81-year-old actor, best known for his roles in The Green Mile, Babe and LA Confidential, as well as the TV series Six Feet Under and ER, plays Ewan Roy, the older brother of Brian Cox’s media mogul Logan Roy. Ewan is largely estranged from his fractured family on political grounds, though he retains a fortune worth $250m (£180m). Continue reading...

Front pages give full coverage of the fatal stabbing and renewed worries about security risks, five years after the murder of Jo CoxThe papers have reacted to the killing of Conservative MP David Amess with shock and anger, while also reigniting the debate over politicians’ safety.The 69-year-old died after he was stabbed several times at an open advice surgery at his constituency in Essex. The Metropolitan police have formally declared the incident as terrorism, and a 25-year-old man, believed to be a Briton with Somali heritage, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Police believe the man acted alone and are not seeking anyone else at the moment. Continue reading...

From immigration to environmental activism: can two strangers see eye to eye over lunch?• Click here if you’d like to dine across the divideShamus, 55, LondonOccupation CEO of an AI company Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron’s government thinks UK wishes to use France to keep Brexit alive in British politicsBoris Johnson’s foreign policy is 80% driven by short-term domestic political interests that make it impossible to come to stable arrangements with him, senior French sources have concluded.Paris is increasingly convinced the British prime minister is not interested in solving the bilateral problems weighing down the relationship, and instead wants to use France as a running sore to keep Brexit alive in British politics. Continue reading...

Ten students were rescued after a group fell into the water, with officials saying there was no flash floodingEleven students drowned and 10 others were rescued during a school outing for a river cleanup in Indonesia’s West Java province.Local officials said 150 students from an Islamic high school were participating in the cleanup on Friday along the banks of the Cileueur river when 21 of them slipped into the water. Continue reading...

Fifteen years ago, writer Charlotte Raven was diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative disease – what did it do to her family and her marriage?The day I found out how I was going to die began innocuously enough: the usual blur of nappy changing and tetchy texts to my husband. Life in our recently refurbished London home had settled into a rhythm, with a low-level background of domestic discontent. Arguments about wallpaper had run their course; our cats had made their peace with our one-year-old daughter, Anna; and I was pleased to have married a responsible hedonist who liked babies but never made me feel guilty for finding them boring.That day, my husband, Tom, had gone to work early; a documentary director, he was filming a series about the London Underground. After a sleepless night, I was eating breakfast with Anna when the landline rang. It was my dad’s old friend Eric, who had been keeping an eye on him ever since my mum had died four years earlier. We were all worried because Murph (everyone called my dad Murph) had been making some bad decisions, then digging in defiantly. Continue reading...

My friend is trying to invent a catchphrase, but he hasn’t had much traction so far. I’m doing what I can to helpMy friend Don Bowen may be the only person I know who has sought to coin and popularise a turn of phrase. He wanted his expression to grow organically, so didn’t deploy a viral campaign. He waited for people to ask him what he’d been up to. And when they did, he would say: “Why, I’m as busy as a horse on an escalator.”He hasn’t had much traction so far, probably for more than one reason. It could be that people lack the visual imagination to process the simile. Or they think the expression references a once-common form of cruelty. I’ve done what I can to help, on the rare occasion opportunity presents itself. Continue reading...

What started as protest calling for a lecturer to be sacked has evolved into a fraught debate over academic freedom and student safetyOn a sunny autumn morning on the campus of Sussex University this week, there was little evidence of the turbulence that has engulfed the institution, its students and staff in recent days.The leaves were turning, young people sat chatting on the lawns and benches, while sports teams assembled for practice and food stalls in front of the library served a steady trickle of customers. Continue reading...

Malaysian national charged after $140m worth of the drug found hidden in container of tilesAn estimated $140m worth of heroin hidden inside a shipping container sent to Melbourne from Malaysia has been intercepted by Australian authorities.The 450kg haul is the largest shipment ever detected in Australia. Continue reading...

The worker has encouraged trans employees to protest the company’s release of the Dave Chapelle show in which he made anti-trans jokesNetflix has fired an employee organizer for allegedly leaking internal documents as the fallout over offensive comments in the new Dave Chappelle stand-up special continues.The streaming platform confirmed to the Guardian on Friday it had fired the employee, whose name has not been released, for sharing “confidential” and “commercially sensitive” information outside the company. Continue reading...

Man, 25, in custody as police investigate ‘potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism’The killing of the Conservative MP David Amess, who died after being stabbed several times at an open advice surgery for his constituents in Essex, has been declared as a terrorist incident.The death of the 69-year-old veteran backbencher brought heartfelt tributes from all parties. Just five years after the murder of Jo Cox, it also prompted renewed worries about the security risks for MPs in an increasingly rancorous and polarised political era. Continue reading...

Fears grow over effect of government blockade on worsening food, water and energy situationThe UK has announced an extra £29m of humanitarian aid to people affected by the deepening conflict in northern Ethiopia, as the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, reviews what kind of further pressure can be placed on the new Ethiopian government to open up badly needed humanitarian corridors.The UK has provided more than £75m to alleviate the risk of famine – making it the second largest aid donor to Ethiopia – but officials acknowledge the de facto government blockade of Tigray is deepening the crisis. Continue reading...

Priti Patel asks all police forces to review security arrangements for MPs ‘with immediate effect’ after David Amess is killed at surgery for constituents

Suicide attack by Isis affiliate also injured more than 80 in southern city of Kandahar after Friday prayersA suicide bombing at a mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar has killed at least 47 people and injured more than 80, in the second major attack on Shia worshippers in Afghanistan in a week.The Imam Bargah mosque was particularly crowded when the attackers struck, because the community had been holding memorial prayers for the victims of the previous bombing, in northern Kunduz province. Continue reading...

People gathered at the police cordon to lay flowers and pay tribute to long-serving member of parliament Sir David Amess, who was stabbed to death on Friday during a constituency surgery at a church in Leigh-on-Sea. A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder, and detectives said specialist counter-terrorism officers from London were leading the initial investigation

My friend and mentor Betty Wood, who has died of cancer aged 76, was a Cambridge academic and a historian of the study of slavery, gender, and religion in the Atlantic world. She was among the first to study enslaved people, and specifically enslaved women, at an elite UK university and was instrumental in building the profile of early American history in the UK.Born in Melton Constable, Norfolk, the daughter of Marjorie (nee Green) and Stanley Wood, a railway guard, she was educated at grammar schools in Fakenham and Scunthorpe and became the first in her family to attend university, studying geography at Keele. Graduating in 1967, the following year she took a master’s in social and economic history at the London School of Economics. Continue reading...

Many in the Saposa Islands are wrestling with the dilemma of starting a new life on the mainland or staying to watch their homes vanishFrancis Tony is buried on an island that is shrinking.The sea breaks on a shoreline that is now less than five metres away from his simple gravesite on Toruar Island in the Solomon Sea. But his son Christopher Sese says the family have no plans to move Tony’s bones to a new gravesite. Continue reading...

The government is using an array of sweeteners, gimmicks and incentives to raise inoculation rates, including turning a 787 Dreamliner into a vaccination clinic

This tragedy should spur a meaningful debate about the empathy that liberal democracies requireThe death of Sir David Amess, after allegedly being stabbed several times at his Essex constituency surgery on Friday, is shocking. This is the 10th time an MP has been killed or attacked since 1979. Only five years ago a far-right sympathiser shot and stabbed the Labour MP Jo Cox as she made her way to her constituency surgery in West Yorkshire a week before the EU referendum. Her murder was the first assassination of a British MP since the death of Conservative MP Ian Gow in 1990. Sir David was a decent, hard-working Conservative with rightwing views and friends across the Commons. His death is a bleak moment for the country, and Britain will be poorer without him. A suspect has been arrested on suspicion of murder. In a democracy, politicians must be accountable and available to voters. No one deserves to be killed while working for their constituents.Surgeries give voters more direct contact with their representatives than in many other countries. After a Muslim extremist attacked a Labour MP in 2010, security was tightened. Perhaps not enough. Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has said that parliament will discuss how to keep MPs safe. Sir David’s death must also spur a meaningful debate about the empathy that liberal democracies require. The facts leading to his death are yet to be established by the court but for too many elected representatives, death threats are seen as a grim but unavoidable part of the job. That this continues is a sign that our political system itself is unwell. The rising tide of anger feels like an inevitable consequence of our hyperpartisan age. The internet has led to people’s political affiliations increasingly determining what information they absorb. Pre-web this was probably the other way around. MPs endure personal abuse on social media, are sent needlessly aggressive emails and have to endure physical intimidation. Female MPs and those from ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by the wave of toxicity. Rage is distorted, often by feelings of impotence about matters that do not lie within the province of politicians at all. Continue reading...

UK figures fall slightly compared to previous day; White House set to lift travel restrictions for some fully vaccinated foreign nationals

Readers respond to an article by Susan McKay discussing the prospect of a united Ireland and the need for constitutional changeSusan McKay falls into the same trap as others who predict the imminence of a united Ireland (On the far side of borders, a new Ireland is taking shape, 9 October). She fails to address the question of what form reunification would take.Does she envisage the six counties and their 18 Westminster constituencies simply decanting into the Irish Republic, to be governed directly from Dublin? Or would she favour some kind of federation preserving the Belfast agreement and guaranteeing northern unionists a separate status with a say in their own affairs? These are the key questions that resulted in partition in 1918-20. No referendum could be fought today without answering them.

World leaders appeal for peace in Lebanese capital as militia groups prepare to bury deadA day after the worst sectarian violence in Beirut in more than a decade, a fraught calm hung over the city on Friday with streets largely empty and government offices closed as militia groups started to bury their dead.Gunfire briefly resounded through areas that on Thursday were the scenes of intense fighting, but armed men were shooting into the air – a defiant precursor to funerals that were due to start. Continue reading...

As attendance of President Xi of China hangs in balance, UK and US launch frantic round of meetingsThe UK, the US and the EU are embarking on a frantic round of climate diplomacy in a last-ditch attempt to bring key countries into a deal on greenhouse gas emissions before the Cop26 climate summit.Alok Sharma, the UK cabinet minister who will preside over the talks, has meetings planned with representatives of China after questions were raised over whether the president, Xi Jinping, would attend Cop26 in person, as well as the other G20 big emitters yet to produce plans on emission cuts before the summit, which opens in Glasgow on 31 October. Continue reading...

UK residents abroad are shocked at the lack of mask wearing back home, and point fingers at the government’s blase approach

Tourist from London, 25, was apparently held captive in an apartment for eight daysAn Italian judge has confirmed the arrest of four people for the alleged kidnap of a 25-year-old British man.Patrick Sam Kourosh Demilecamps, from London, had been on holiday in Italy when he was allegedly kidnapped and held captive for eight days in an apartment in Monte San Giusto, a small town in the central Marche region. He was freed by police on Wednesday after they traced him via the location tracker on his mobile phone. Continue reading...

Housing activity accounts for 29% of GDP, but Evergrande’s debt crisis is sign that things could soon changeIn China today, the buzz is all about how the government there too has stumbled into an energy crisis with widespread power cuts. Yet this and other supply shocks will eventually pass, while the $300bn(£218bn) of debt enveloping China’s second biggest property developer, Evergrande, is of greater significance. It suggests China’s long housing boom is over, and bodes badly for the increasingly troubled economy, with implications for the rest of the world too.China’s real estate market has been called the most important sector in the world economy. Valued at about $55tn, it is now twice the size of its US equivalent, and four times larger than China’s GDP. Taking into account construction and other property-related goods and services, annual housing activity accounts for about 29% of China’s GDP, far above the 10%-20% typical of most developed nations. Continue reading...

Brussels has been ‘preparing for worst’, with options ranging from tariffs on UK imports to ditching dealDavid Frost, the UK’s Brexit minister, has warned there is a big gap between the EU and the UK negotiating positions as he enters talks with the European Commission over changes to the arrangements for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.The EU has offered to sweep away most customs and health checks on animal and plant products entering Northern Ireland under a revision of the current system but both sides privately recognise that fundamental differences remain between their visions for the future. Continue reading...

A gift of a camera inspired Belmaya Nepali to rise above poverty and abuse to make documentaries• I Am Belmaya reviewBelmaya Nepali’s life changed for ever when, at 14, she was given a camera.The British film-maker Sue Carpenter had come to Pokhara, a tourist city in central Nepal, to run a photography project with disadvantaged girls living in an institution. One of those girls was Belmaya. Continue reading...

Man arrested on suspicion of murder after Conservative MP attacked during regular surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex

Police on alert and inquiry launched after speaker of parliament pays visit to Miloš Zeman without permissionPolice in the Czech Republic will stop unauthorised hospital visits to the country’s ailing president, Miloš Zeman, after doctors treating him in intensive care complained that a leading political figure had called on him without their knowledge or permission.Prague’s central military hospital launched an internal inquiry after the speaker of the country’s parliament, Radek Vondráček, revealed he had seen Zeman on Thursday and described him as being in good spirits. Continue reading...

Man arrested after MP for Southend West assaulted during constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea

Espen Andersen Bråthen transferred as investigation into motives and psychiatric evaluation continueThe man suspected of killing five people with a bow and arrows and other weapons in Norway has been transferred to the public health service, a state prosecutor has said, amid mounting questions over his mental health.“Based on an initial assessment of his health condition, this was the best solution,” the prosecutor, Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen, told the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK. Continue reading...

Prospect of the FDP’s Christian Lindner taking charge has ‘half of Europe quaking in its boots’Germany’s biggest neighbours are watching the formation of the country’s new government with a mixture of hope and fear, amid concerns that a fiscal hardliner hotly tipped to become the next finance minister could drag the continent back to the frosty standoffs of the eurozone crisis.The Social Democratic party (SPD), the German Greens and the Free Democratic party (FDP) are expected to inch further towards a “traffic light” power-sharing deal on Friday, with formal coalition talks likely to start next week. Continue reading...

Veteran MP for Southend West assaulted during constituency surgery in Leigh-on-SeaThe Conservative MP Sir David Amess has been stabbed multiple times while holding a constituency surgery, police and a report have said.Sky News said the veteran MP, who has represented Southend West in Essex since 1983, was attacked at Belfairs Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea. Continue reading...

Authorities question staff of Russian NGO Memorial after mob disrupts screening of Mr Jones at its officeA group of masked men stormed the offices of a renowned human rights organisation in Moscow on Thursday evening to disrupt the screening of Mr Jones, a British co-produced film about the Holodomor, the Stalin-era famine that killed millions of peasants in Soviet Ukraine during the 1930s.The 2019 movie, starring the British actor James Norton and directed by the celebrated Polish film-maker Agnieszka Holland, depicts the real-life story of Gareth Jones, a Welshman who is widely considered to have been the first journalist to document the famine, after repeated visits to the Soviet Union. Continue reading...

Rights groups raise concerns over deal to provide services on Bhasan Char, as Bangladesh plans to increase camp’s population by 80,000The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) is facing questions over whether it is helping to detain Rohingya refugees in prison-like conditions by providing services on a controversial island camp.Over the past year, Bangladesh has relocated almost 20,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, an island formed of silt deposits in the Bay of Bengal thought to be vulnerable to cyclones, which the refugees are unable to leave. Continue reading...

Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, who directed the acclaimed drama, reveals the struggle to portray his community ‘with dignity and compassion’“I am Somali and I made this film for Somali people to watch a film in their mother tongue without needing subtitles,” says film director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed. Ahmed made his feature debut with The Gravedigger’s Wife, and after premiering in May at the Cannes film festival’s Critics’ Week, it made headlines as the first film from Somalia to be put forward for the Oscars.“As a film-maker, I felt a sense of responsibility to tell the story of how I view my Somali community and to tell this story with dignity, tenderness and compassion – all the qualities I’ve been raised with,” says Ahmed, who was born in Somalia before moving to Finland as a teenager. Continue reading...

Making a biodegradable material strong enough to replace plastic is a tough task. But scientists are trying to do just thatWhen people think about plastic waste, they often think of the packaging that swaddles supermarket fruits and vegetables – shiny layers that are stripped away and thrown in the bin as soon as the produce is unloaded at home.It’s a wasteful cycle that California-based company Apeel says it can help end. The firm has developed an edible, tasteless and invisible plant-based spray for fruits and vegetables that works as a barrier to keep oxygen out and moisture in, increasing shelf life without the need for single-use plastic. Continue reading...

It was the day rampaging Trump supporters stormed the Capitol – and almost derailed democracy. Now, using footage from rioters’ cameras, an unsettling film takes you into the thick of the mayhemWhen Dan Reed and Jamie Roberts began approaching networks about a film focused on the storming of the US Capitol – an attack on American democracy on the scale of 9/11, and all the more shattering for having come from within – they were met with a lack of enthusiasm.“The response was, ‘Why do we need a documentary? Everyone knows what happened’,” says Reed, whose previous hits include Leaving Neverland. It is true the January insurrection – in which thousands of Trump supporters rampaged in protest over the “stolen” election, leaving five dead and 140 police officers injured – had been documented in real time. Authorities reviewed 15,000 hours of footage, making it the largest digital crime scene in history. Continue reading...

I’m not sure why the depression was so bad – though lockdown sounds like a plausible explanationIt’s great to be well enough to come back to doing digested week on a fortnightly basis. I’ve suffered with mental health issues throughout my adult life, but the last few months have been among the worst and it is only recently that I have been able to make a gradual return to work. Throughout this time I couldn’t have been looked after better as I have been supported by so many people from family, friends and colleagues at work to mental health professionals – I was lucky enough to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital at my lowest point – yet I am still unable to say exactly why I had such bad depression and anxiety at this particular point. When people ask, I’ve taken to saying that it was the result of being stuck at home and not seeing anyone during lockdown as that sounds a plausible explanation, though I have no idea if it is true. After all, I seemed to survive the first lockdown just fine. All I know for certain is that I had reached a point where I would wake up having a panic attack every morning and on some days be unable to leave the bedroom, except to go to the toilet, for the entire day. Recovery was painfully slow and I knew I was getting better only when I belatedly realised that I had gone several days without horrific nightmares and that my anxiety levels were not as high as they had been. Even then it took a while to trust that the improvement was permanent. I’m sure my mental health problems will return – they always have – but hopefully I will have a prolonged period of respite. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed, keep on taking the meds, doing as my therapist says and say thank you to everyone who helped me. Not least the readers who took the trouble to get in touch. Continue reading...

Putting off bedtime for one more boxset episode, or some ‘me time’? You may be a sleep procrastinator – and doing yourself serious harmThe hour is late, and I am tired. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do the sensible thing and go to bed. This is the first time today that no one has needed anything from me. The first time I haven’t been expected to be working, cooking, tidying, fetching, managing, delivering, caring or doing any of the other panoply of tasks most working-age adults seem to face on any given day. It’s just me, being me, in the quiet. Why would I cut this precious moment short?I have always been a night owl – our owlish (night-time) or larkish (morning) chronotypes are set by our genetics – but in recent years I’ve become a “revenge sleep procrastinator”, too. This clunky translation of the Chinese term bàofùxìng áoyè became popular on social media during the pandemic. In China, most sleep or bedtime procrastinators are workers on the soul-sapping and horribly common 9-9-6 schedule (9am-9pm, six days a week) who, despite being exhausted, use their late-night, post-work hours to claw back some sense of self, even when they know they should be sleeping. My situation – two small children plus full-time job – is embarrassingly far from their experience, and yet many of us in the west find ourselves doing the same things. The revenge bit – which might be better translated as “retaliatory” – is that we are avenging ourselves against our busy lives, either by staying up too late or by not going to sleep once in bed, often because we’re on our screens. Continue reading...

The producer behind Get Out, Paranormal Activity, the Purge series and now Halloween talks about Blumhouse’s runaway success, gun control and giving new talent a leg upThe nights are drawing in, Halloween is approaching and cinemas are back to full capacity. This can only mean one thing: horror movies, hordes of them. In recent years it feels as if the autumnal horror wave has become a year-round tsunami. Horror is everywhere on our screens these days, and if there’s one person to blame, it might well be Jason Blum.The 52-year-old producer seems to have cracked the code when it comes to low-budget, high-profit, endlessly sequelisable horror product. His 2007 breakthrough, the camcorder freakout Paranormal Activity, set the tone. Made on a $15,000 (£11,000) budget, it took nearly $200m at the box office worldwide. Blum has churned out a steady stream of hits ever since: The Purge, Insidious, Sinister, Happy Death Day, Split, Get Out and Us to name a few. His company, Blumhouse, is also custodian of vintage horror properties such as the Halloween franchise (2018’s revamp took more than $250m worldwide; its follow-up, Halloween Kills, is out now), and Universal’s monster gallery (after last year’s The Invisible Man, a Ryan Gosling-led Wolfman and a Karyn Kusama-directed Dracula are in the works). These are just edited highlights of Blum’s sprawling empire, which also includes dramas, streaming miniseries, documentaries and podcasts. According to IMDb, he currently has more than 30 titles in the pipeline. Continue reading...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said oral argument rules were revamped after a study found women were more prone to being interruptedJustice Sonia Sotomayor has revealed that changes have been made in the supreme court’s structure of oral arguments following studies confirming what women on the court have long noticed – that female justices were more prone to being interrupted by male justices and attorneys.Speaking at a New York University School of Law event on Wednesday, Sotomayor said the new format now allows justices to ask questions individually, in order of seniority, after an attorney’s time is up. Continue reading...

After a painfully slow start, the rate of vaccine uptake in three Australian states and territories has risen swiftly, allowing millions to exit lockdown