The man who helped revitalise New York with a linear park on a disused elevated railway hopes to do the same for the UK capitalNew York was revitalised by the High Line, a ribbon of parkland floating above Manhattan on a disused elevated railway that has become one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions.Now the High Line’s designer hopes to give London its own green thread, after being chosen to create the Camden Highline. Continue reading...
The city fears its discussion on slave owner Edward Colston is being dragged into a divisive national ‘culture war’A history commission set up by Bristol’s mayor after the toppling of the Edward Colston statue has urged ministers to stay out of debates on the future of dozens of city streets named after slave traders.Prof Tim Cole, the commission’s chair, said a new audit by Bristol city council had identified a handful of streets named after Colston, whose company enslaved at least 80,000 Africans, and dozens more streets named after other slave traders. “It should be up to people who live on those streets to decide – it is an uber-local issue,” he said. “If a bunch of people who live on Colston Avenue want to change the name of their street they should be empowered to do so.” Continue reading...
Kate Winslet on facing down misogyny in film, strange lockdown habits and the unexpected joys of fossil huntingA man is adjusting the angle of his laptop. “Hello!” he waves. Is that a dishwasher behind him? A little wooden knick-knack, painted with “Let’s Dance” in a jaunty font, balances on an Aga. I have landed in a cheery overlit garage, somewhere on the south coast. And then the nice man moves to the side and bloody hell there’s Kate Winslet. Movie-star Kate Winslet – “Hiya!” – in a smart black jacket with her hair tied back, and that famous smile where it looks like she’s trying not to laugh at a filthy joke.The man is her husband, Ned [Abel Smith, previously Ned Rocknroll] and the garage is their “little barn”. “It’s not actually a particularly nice little barn,” she says, her energy very much that of a kindly lady doing your bra fitting at Marks & Spencer – I like her immediately. “But over here, can you see the amazing sink? That’s from the set of Mildred Pierce. It’s got shit taps. But I do like to try to take a little something from my films. I took all the curtains from the cottage in The Holiday…” Her children, Mia (20, her daughter with her first husband Jim Threapleton), Joe (16, from her second marriage, to Sam Mendes) and Bear (born in 2013 soon after she married Ned) keep cutting them up, smaller and smaller: “To, like, upcycle their jeans. Also, I did a film called All the King’s Men where Jude Law and I had to do this snogging scene at a table, where we snog, snog, snogged our socks off. And it was so fabulous. As the scene was happening I kept thinking: ‘I’m going to have to buy this table.’ So I did!” Continue reading...
€47m building will feature a church, a mosque and a synagogue all linked to a central meeting spaceOn the site of a church torn down by East Germany’s communist rulers, a new place of worship is set to rise that will bring Christians, Jews and Muslims under one roof – and it has already been dubbed a “churmosquagogue”.The foundation stone of the House of One in Berlin will be laid at a ceremony on 27 May, marking the end of 10 years of planning and the beginning of an estimated four years of construction, and symbolising a new venture in interfaith cooperation and dialogue. The €47m building, designed by Berlin architects Kuehn Malvezzi, will incorporate a church, a mosque and a synagogue linked to a central meeting space. People of other faiths and denominations, and those of no faith, will be invited to events and discussions in the large hall. Continue reading...
Ultra-Orthodox community in north London told to keep socially distant after last year’s festivities led to huge spike in infectionsUltra-Orthodox rabbis in north London have issued unprecedented guidance on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim in a bid to avoid a repeat of last year’s celebrations that led to a huge spike in Covid infections.The advice was issued by the Office of the Rabbinate of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in the form of a notice to be displayed in synagogues and shared on WhatsApp groups before the 24-hour festival, which starts at sundown on Thursday. Continue reading...
The psychologist’s fascinating study of friendship finds that the quality of our relationships determines our health, happiness and chance of a long lifeYou may not have heard of Robin Dunbar. But you will, perhaps, know of his work. Dunbar, now emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, is the man who first suggested that there may be a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom you can comfortably maintain stable social relationships – or, as Stephen Fry put it on the TV show QI, the number of people “you would not hesitate to go and sit with if you happened to see them at 3am in the departure lounge at Hong Kong airport”. Human beings, Dunbar found when he conducted his research in the 1990s, typically have 150 friends in general (people who know us on sight, and with whom we have a history), of whom just five can usually be described as intimate.Friendship, as Dunbar reveals, requires investment. It 'dies fast' when not maintained Continue reading...
In a new four-part series, the allegations of sexual abuse aimed at Woody Allen are dissected and examined in exhaustive detailWhen film-makers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick first met Dylan Farrow in January 2018, they were skeptical about how much could be added to the record seared in the public memory of her family’s infamous division, arguably the most publicized and scrutinized case of alleged incest in recent American history. The directors behind some of the decade’s most incisive documentaries on sexual assault and the cultures which permit and abet it, including On The Record, The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War, were familiar with the broad strokes of Dylan’s story: that in August 1992, at age seven, she claims that her adoptive father, the superstar director Woody Allen, sexually assaulted her in an attic. Allen denied ever molesting Dylan, and cast the allegations – in public and in an acrimonious, highly scrutinized 1993 custody suit against Dylan’s mother, Mia Farrow – as the machinations of a scorned woman (Mia had recently discovered Allen’s sexual relationship with adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, then 21).Related: Allen v Farrow review – effective docuseries on allegations of abuse Continue reading...
The sheer vibrancy and joy of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean-inspired dishes caught everyone’s imaginationIn 2002 the literary agent Felicity Rubinstein found herself drawn to a white-walled deli that had just opened around the corner from her home in London’s Notting Hill. It was called Ottolenghi and its food display was a riot of colour and promise. Eating it looked like it might be a quick route to feeling good about yourself. “I became rather obsessed with it,” she says now. “I reckoned it wasn’t difficult to make this food. I just had to know what was in it.” Soon Ottolenghi opened an outpost in Islington. Sarah Lavelle, then an editor at Ebury Books, lived close by. “I went down one weekend and people were queueing out the door. I thought, ‘Something’s going on here.’” Merope Mills, then editor of the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, also visited. “I was looking for a new vegetarian cooking columnist,” she says. “And I was struck by all these brilliant-looking salads.”Ottolenghi and Tamimi took simple ingredients and made them sing Continue reading...
Unpublished drawings show a scrupulous painter inspired by the precise mathematical ratios of the Renaissance mastersAn early sketch for Salvador Dalí’s The Sacrament of the Last Supper reveals that the artist’s original thinking was far more conventional than the finished work would suggest. The painting, one of Dalí’s most popular, is a vast depiction of the Last Supper in which an ethereal torso with outstretched arms, possibly the resurrected Christ, looms over seated figures of Christ – portrayed with the features of the artist’s wife, Gala – and the apostles. The sketch reveals that Dalí’s original thinking was closer to Leonardo da Vinci’s interpretation of the event.It is one of three Dalí drawings believed to be previously unpublished, each relating to his famous paintings of the mid-1950s, including Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), in which he painted Gala as a devotional figure before a crucified Christ, and Skull of Zurbarán, his homage to the 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán. Continue reading...
You need therapy to help you resolve this painful experience, says Mariella Frostrup. And keep away from internet pornography which can only be more damagingThe dilemma I’m a very happily married man and sex with my wife is loving and satisfying. Recently, however, through viewing porn on the internet, I have become increasingly drawn towards watching older men having sex. Occasionally, I dream of my deceased father and some of these dreams are sexual in nature. The men I find myself watching often remind me of my dad. He was successful and well liked, but was also physically and emotionally abusive to his children.I don’t ever recall feeling any true fatherly love, affection or security in my life from him. Often I wonder if I am now seeking out my father’s love. Continue reading...
After comments about a ‘culture of disrespect’, prime minister responded it was not ‘confined to the parliament’Scott Morrison has indicated that he has reprimanded his staff for not bringing a former government staffer’s rape allegations to his attention as soon as a reporter submitted questions earlier this month.The prime minister has also taken umbrage at a major business group’s comments about a pervasive “culture of disrespect” in politics, with Morrison responding that “if any workplace thinks that this is just confined to the parliament, they’re kidding themselves”. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#5EET0)
The bank, which is due to reveal its annual results this week, faces more challenges than the impact of Covid-19 on profitsHSBC’s chief executive Noel Quinn has had an unenviable first year on the job. In 2020 alone, Quinn rolled out a major restructuring plan that will involve at least 35,000 job cuts, battled the financial impact of Covid in both Asia and Europe, and steered the bank through a geopolitical storm over its response to democracy clashes in Hong Kong.Now he is set to preside over the bank’s second straight year of declining annual profits. Continue reading...
Initial group, which includes aged care residents and staff as well as chief medical officer, receive Pfizer vaccine on SundayThe Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has received the Pfizer vaccine, as he joined a small first group to be vaccinated against Covid-19 on Sunday – a step the government says is intended to build public confidence in the safety of the vaccines.Morrison – the 12th member of the group to receive the vaccine at a televised event in Sydney – described it as a “curtain raiser” for the formal start of the vaccine rollout on Monday. Continue reading...
Call comes as prime minister aims for all adults to be vaccinated by JulyData on the number of Covid-19 cases is now so encouraging that outdoor sports for children and small numbers of adults should be allowed immediately as part of an accelerated easing of the lockdown, a leading scientist and adviser to government has told the Observer.With the prime minister expected to take a cautious approach to lifting restrictions in a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, whose work feeds into the Sage committee’s sub-group Spi-M, said the data showed there was no need for the government to be “ultra-cautious”. Continue reading...
Two anti-coup protesters in Myanmar were shot dead on Saturday by riot police who fired live rounds, local media reported. The deaths occurred in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, after security forces ratcheted up their pressure against protesters, using water cannon, teargas, slingshots and rubber bullets
There was a rescue campaign on Twitter, but the women taken from a Nigerian school were saved by their strength and diplomacyThe resistance began three months after the young women were taken from their school dormitory by Islamist militants and hidden in the depths of a forest. It would end in direct confrontation and disobedience, and an unlikely victory which saved their lives.But as the extremists of Boko Haram drove them through the bush to camps beyond the reach of any rescue, freedom was years away. Continue reading...
Jasmine Harrison made the record-breaking journey in 70 days, three hours and 48 minutesA 21-year-old swimming teacher from North Yorkshire has become the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.Jasmine Harrison, a part-time teacher and bartender from Thirsk, began the journey in December when she departed from La Gomera in the Canary Islands. It took her 70 days, three hours and 48 minutes to reach Antigua. Continue reading...
The old world order is ending. The challenge for Australia is that the driving force behind the change is China, a country so crucial to our future in AsiaIn June 1987, a group of world leaders met in Venice to plan global economic policy for the 21st century. The leaders represented seven of the eight wealthiest countries in the world; the Soviet Union was excluded.Addressing the summit, US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an example of “how not to run a country”. But he was less hostile towards China, which was then the world’s ninth-largest economy, just ahead of Spain. Continue reading...
As smoking falls out of fashion, BAT is pinning its hopes on younger users of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouchesFlashing an ice-white smile for her 50,000 followers on TikTok, a fresh-faced young woman pops a flavoured nicotine pouch into her mouth, as one of Pakistan’s most popular love songs plays in the background.More than 3,000 miles away, in Sweden, another social media starlet lip-syncs for the camera, to a different pop tune. The same little pouches, made by British American Tobacco, appear in shot. Continue reading...
For better and for worse, drinking has been a constant thread running through writer Megan Nolan’s relationships. She reflects on the dual thrills of alcohol and romanceFrom the very beginning, whenever there was a crush, there was also a drink in my hand. In his novel High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s narrator Rob, an unhappy vinyl obsessive, asks himself: “Which came first, the music or the misery?” Did he learn to be unhappy from the sad songs he loved, or did the songs comfort him after the unhappiness was already a fact? In my case, the question is something like this: which came first, the booze or the boys? Did I just happen to begin my romantic life at the same time as my drinking life? Or were my infatuations and love stories authored – or at least fuelled – by the alcohol that accompanied them?This is not the story of a tragic, ruined woman who destroys all her relationships through drinking. In some, I drank very moderately; in most others, only to good-spirited excess, which caused no harm. There is no redemption arc here, no coming to the light. I still drink now. It is one of my personal bugbears that we seem as a culture flatly incapable of discussing many of life’s most complex issues without urgently needing to name and solve them, preferably with formal medical interventions. And so I can’t speak about a plodding, hopeless soul sickness that afflicts me at times without being cornered into describing it as depression or an anxiety disorder. This is not to say that these things don’t exist; of course they do, and over the years I’ve taken medication for both. But the terms and the drugs are too blunt as tools to address the infinite realm of human suffering and struggle that they sit within. Continue reading...
End your meal on a high with this light, airy dessert infused with Indian spicesI became slightly obsessed with masala chai, that heady Indian infusion of spices and tea leaves, when I was backpacking through India, and especially those tiny clay cups of heavily sweetened tea that were served on trains. Now I always have a ready supply of spices on hand to make my own at home, but why stick to just tea when there are puddings to be made, too? Continue reading...
Met Office issues series of weather warnings, with threat level highest in south WalesA series of flood alerts have been triggered as parts of the UK record more than a month’s rainfall in 26 hours.Six Met Office weather warnings were in place on Saturday morning, covering mostly western areas ranging from Scotland to Plymouth. Continue reading...
Opposition figure appeals to Russians from court, saying ‘to live is to risk it all’A Moscow court has rejected an appeal from Alexei Navalny that virtually guarantees the Russian opposition figure will be sent to a prison camp for two and a half years.In a widely expected ruling, the judge upheld a decision to imprison Navalny by reversing a parole handed down in 2014 for embezzlement in a case Navalny said was politically motivated. Continue reading...
Concern mounts for welfare of more than 2,500 livestock on two vessels off Italy and Cyprus after bluetongue outbreakThousands of cattle remain stranded at sea on two livestock ships that left Spain in mid-December, as campaigners desperately seek veterinary support for the animals.The two vessels were bound for Libya but owing to an onboard outbreak of the bovine disease bluetongue were refused entry at multiple ports, said Maria Boada Saña, a vet with Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF), which has been tracking the ships via maritime websites. Continue reading...
The broadcaster on chewed pen lids, infertility and fantasies of gutting fishBorn in Manchester, Emma Barnett, 36, began her eponymous show on BBC Radio 5 live in 2016 and won Radio Broadcaster of the Year 2018. She is a Newsnight presenter and last month became the main anchor on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. She is married with a son and lives in London.What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
For the past year, many men have spent more time with their children than ever before. Could it force a permanent change?Primary school spelling tests ringed by coffee stains; office printouts splashed with paint from GCSE art projects; laptops running out of puff in the middle of Zoomed-in geography lessons; and everyone in the family, from the mildest of adults to the sweetest of children, arguing with the fury of stockbrokers over their fair share of the wifi bandwidth. By shutting schools, by taking away the familiar avenues of social escape, by crunching together our working lives with our home lives, this marathon Covid pandemic has changed the terms of parenting beyond all recognition. Mothers have absorbed most of the blow: taking on more of the extra childcare; surrendering more of their scarcer work hours; being interrupted by children more; and any one of them would be justified in saying it was ever thus. But in the midst of it all, fathers have been undergoing some quietly radical changes in behaviour, too.Or so research suggests. Dads are spending more time than ever before with their children, according to a report last year by the Office for National Statistics. Meanwhile, those dads who were already inclined to take on the playful aspects of parenting (what’s known by sociologists as “non-routine care”, and by the rest of us as “the fun shit”) have started doing more of the unpaid, unglamorous work of child-rearing, according to a joint study of lockdown behaviours by the Universities of Birmingham and Kent. Two of its authors, Holly Birkett and Sarah Forbes, believe that this year of intermittent lockdowns and school closures, along with the widespread adoption of home working, has hurried on an evolution in caring roles we might otherwise have waited decades for. Continue reading...
Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton says ‘fervent anti-vaxxers’ are a ‘small minority’Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, has assured the public that “fervent anti-vaxxers” are a “small minority” as hundreds rallied in capital cities across Australia.Multiple people were arrested at a Melbourne rally on Saturday amid clashes with the police, while protesters also marched through the Sydney CBD and large groups gathered in Brisbane and Adelaide. Continue reading...
In legal documents, Eilish said the man had caused her ‘emotional injury’, including fear for the safety of herself and her familyBillie Eilish has been granted a restraining order against an alleged stalker who she says camps outside her family home in Los Angeles and throws “extremely disturbing” letters on to their property, according to documents obtained by NBC News.Related: Billie Eilish talks to younger Billie Eilish – with both wisdom and wit Continue reading...
The reality TV and rap superstar couple known as Kimye are parting ways after almost seven years of marriage, following reports a split was ‘imminent’Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are getting a divorce after almost seven years of marriage.The reality TV superstar, 40, filed for divorce from the rapper, 43, on Friday in Los Angeles, court sources confirmed to the AP, and is seeking joint legal and physical custody of their four children, daughters North, seven years old, and Chicago, two, and sons Saint, five, and Psalm, 19 months. Continue reading...
Analysis: Couple’s treatment by a critical UK press made any return as working royals unlikelyThe decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to permanently step down as working royals comes as no surprise.When they first announced their wish to no longer perform royal duties, and to become financially independent – blindsiding Buckingham Palace by making their intentions public before matters had been negotiated with the Queen – it was hard to see how they could return. Continue reading...
Request for information on Dubai ruler’s missing daughter follows release of secretly recorded messagesThe UN has asked the United Arab Emirates for proof that the Dubai ruler’s daughter is still alive, after the release of secret messages she recorded this week claiming she was being held in captivity after the failure of a 2018 attempt to escape the emirate.A spokesperson for Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said on Friday that the UN had “expressed our concerns regarding the situation, in light of the disturbing videos which have surfaced this week. We have requested more information and clarification on the current situation.” Continue reading...
Secretly organised via social media, illegal events are becoming more creative and sophisticatedPolice forces have reported an increase in large illegal lockdown parties in recent weeks, as streams of reports from members of the public expose popup events organised in secret via social media.“We’re coming across bigger events at the moment,” said Stuart Bill, bronze commander for Operation Reliant, a dedicated West Midlands police taskforce for tackling significant Covid breaches. “We’re seeing house parties and events in warehouses and derelict buildings, but finding them can be tricky. Continue reading...
Sir David Attenborough’s advice to spend quiet time in woodland is revelatory, once you get past the drone of the A40Sir David Attenborough’s latest advice for restoring our damaged relationship with nature is reassuringly straightforward. “One of the simplest things that you should do if you get the chance, when you get the chance, is just naturally to stop,” he told the Call of the Wild podcast.I am wandering through Horsenden Wood in far West London, looking for a good place to stop. Although it’s a tightly circumscribed parcel of nature – 10 acres in total, and all that remains of the ancient forest that once dominated these parts – I am, in truth, a little bit lost. Walking in aimless circles will do that to you. I could not, at this moment, even point in the general direction of my car. Continue reading...
Labour MPs urge attorney general to refer case of Anthony Williams, 70, to appeal court as unduly lenientThe attorney general is under increasing pressure from MPs and campaigners to ask the court of appeal to reconsider the sentence of a man who strangled his wife days into the first coronavirus lockdown.Anthony Williams, 70, was sentenced to five years in jail at Swansea crown court on Thursday after he was found not guilty of murder but admitted manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. The judge, Paul Thomas, said it was a “tragic case on several levels” but in his view Williams’ mental state was “severely affected at the time”. Continue reading...
Begum, who fled to join Isis in Syria as a schoolgirl, wants to return to challenge removal of her British citizenshipThe supreme court will announce next week whether Shamima Begum, who left London as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State in 2015, should be allowed back into the UK to challenge the removal of her British citizenship.Begum was 15 when she fled to Syria to live under Isis rule for more than three years. Continue reading...
Pair aged 20 and 22 arrested on suspicion of murder following incident earlier in February in south LondonTwo men have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a 22-year-old who was fatally stabbed in south London.Police officers and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service were called to a property in Wisbeach Road, Croydon, just after 8pm on 5 February and found Lavaun Witter suffering a stab injury. He was pronounced dead at the scene an hour later. Continue reading...
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