40-year-old man arrested on suspicion of rape earlier this week and conditionally bailed pending further inquiriesA second man has been arrested in connection with an investigation into Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy over alleged rape and sexual assault offences, Cheshire constabulary has said.The force said on Saturday that a 40-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of rape earlier this week and released on bail. Continue reading...
The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, said it was 'time to close this phase' of the evacuation effort, after the final UK flight for Afghan nationals left Kabul airport. About 14,000 people have been airlifted out of the country by British forces in less than two weeks
As the high school comedy returns for a third series, its Bafta-winning star talks about stage fright, embarrassing scenes, and the torment that lay behind her desire to please peopleIn June, Aimee Lou Wood, 26, won a Bafta for best female performance in a comedy programme for her role as another Aimee (a teenager) in the hit Netflix show Sex Education, about a set of sexually active high school students, now returning for a third series. Even before the Bafta, Wood was always being stopped in the street. Fans wanted to talk to her, about Sex Education, about everything, because they related to her so strongly. Wood is naturally so friendly, she’d engage in conversation and make herself late. Then she starred opposite Bill Nighy in the forthcoming Oliver Hermanus film, Living: “Obviously, every single person recognises Bill Nighy, and he handles it with such grace,” Wood says, when we meet to talk in a north London photo studio. “With people in the street, I was like [she mock hyperventilates]: ‘Did I say the right thing? Was I nice enough?’ Now I’m learning to be: ‘Thank you so much!’ and carry on walking.”It’s easy to see why fans relate to Wood: never mind the dazzling prettiness, she’s sparky, warm and expressive. She comes from a working-class family in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and although, following her parents’ divorce, her mother’s new partner paid for her to attend a private secondary school, she kept her rich Mancunian tones: “I sound like my mum and I like that. I like that I sound like where I’m from.” Continue reading...
Business secretary reported as saying foreign labour only offers ‘temporary solution’ as companies face supply chain crisisEmployers have been told to invest in UK-based workers rather than relying on labour from abroad as supermarkets and suppliers struggle to contend with a chronic shortage of lorry drivers caused by the exodus of hauliers from EU countries because of Brexit and Covid.The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, wrote to business leaders on Friday saying foreign labour only offered “a short-term, temporary solution” after industry groups, Logistics UK and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) called on the department to provide temporary UK visas to EU truck drivers. They said the lack of drivers was “increasingly putting unsustainable pressure on retailers and their supply chains”. Continue reading...
After a summer of free entry, visitors will now have to pay up to £8 to climb the London project. But will they bother?It has been called a “BTec Eiffel Tower” and a “slag heap”. It’s been compared to “a car-park Santa’s grotto, with dogs pretending to be reindeer”. The Marble Arch Mound, the temporary artificial hill commissioned by Westminster city council as an “ambitious” visitor attraction, has become, as a representative of the local community put it, “an international laughing stock”.The council responded to criticism by allowing free entry during August, and a certain number of the curious and the ghoulishly fascinated have turned up. This week it will start charging again. Given fundamental flaws in the project’s conception, the question is whether people will want to pay £8 for a weekend fast-track ticket now, any more than they did when it first opened at the end of July. Continue reading...
How did humans learn to talk and why haven’t chimpanzees followed suit? Linguistics expert Sverker Johansson busts some chauvinist mythsHow and when did human language evolve? Did a “grammar module” just pop into our ancestors’ brains one day thanks to a random change in our DNA? Or did language come from grooming, or tool use, or cooking meat with fire? These and other hypotheses exist, but there seems little way to rationally choose between them. It was all so very long ago, so any theory must be essentially speculation.Or must it? This is the question presented as an elegant intellectual thriller by The Dawn of Language: Axes, Lies, Midwifery and How We Came to Talk. Its author is Sverker Johansson, a serene and amiable 60-year-old Swede who speaks to me over Zoom from his book-crammed home study in the city of Falun, where he works as a senior adviser at Dalarna University. Continue reading...
Soon after 9/11, I moved into an old building by Ground Zero. First step? Plant an unlikely patch of greenIf you listen, I mean really listen, you will hear your garden speaking to you. Mine, which sits on a 10th-floor Manhattan terrace, a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center stood, first spoke to me on a crisp September morning 20 years ago. I had jury duty that day and decided to walk the two miles south from my home in Greenwich Village down to the courthouse in the financial district.But when I turned south on to 6th Avenue, I looked up to see see an orange hole flaming at the centre of the tower ahead of me. A woman nearby fell to the pavement, screaming something about a plane. It didn’t seem like a good day to go downtown; yet something compelled me to continue south. When I arrived at a gas station on Canal Street, a boom sounded and a puff of smoke issued from just behind the tower. “What was that?” I asked a taxi driver, filling his tank nearby. “Well, see those two buildings are connected with pipes,” he said with the unquestionable authority endemic to New York cabbies. “When you get a fire in one it spreads and you get a fire in the other.” Makes sense, I thought, and pushed southwards. Continue reading...
Syrian director Amel Alzakout records her own stranding in this difficult-to-watch film on a day when 40 people died off the coast of LesbosPowerful but painful to watch, this experimental documentary challenges viewers to avert their eyes from the tragedy unfolding before them. It consists almost entirely of footage recorded on a waterproof camera that was strapped to the wrist of Syrian co-director Amel Alzakout while she was floating in the sea off the coast of Lesbos, after the boat she’d been travelling in sunk. Like the other 300 people on the vessel that day in 2015, Alzakout had paid people smugglers to help her escape the war in Syria and find a better life abroad. While she lived to make this film and was reunited with her partner and co-director Khaled Abdulwahed, some 40 people died in the water that day.It’s possible that some of the perished are even captured on film here – though to be honest, it’s hard to make out much for long stretches as the images thrash around, evoking the panic Alzakout and her fellow passengers, many in lifejackets, must have been experiencing as they tried to stay afloat. Sometimes the camera is above the waterline and we can hear people crying, calling hysterically, blowing whistles to call for help. Otherwise, the view is of jeans-clad legs and other jumbled bodies twisting in the water, the sound muffled by the sea. Continue reading...
At 30, the Normal People author is already the most talked-about novelist of her generation. As she readies her third novel, she’s bracing for more (unwanted) attentionSally Rooney appears before a stark, white background, stripped of even the most incidental feature. It makes me laugh: in 18 months of Zoom meetings, I’ve encountered people in their bedrooms and home offices, in front of bookcases and windows – situations that, no matter how bland or contrived, still betray some minor, contextualising detail. The empty staging today is, evidently, something that Rooney, after two hit novels and the rapid onset of an unwelcome fame, clearly wishes might extend further than a video call. Later in our conversation she will tell me celebrity is a condition that, in many cases, “happens without meaningful consent – the famous person never even wanted to become famous”. Now, after exchanging greetings, I mention the singularity of the naked white walls and she laughs and says merely, “Yes.”There are some good reasons for the 30-year-old’s reticence. Her first two novels – Conversations With Friends and Normal People – were published in quick succession to the sort of acclaim that put Rooney in a category of exposure more consistent with actors than novelists. The books featured characters in late adolescence and early adulthood struggling through first relationships while starting to organise their thoughts about the world. They were erudite and self-assured, written with a dry, flat affect that was often very funny, and contained the kinds of fleeting, well-wrought descriptions that infused every scene with a casual virtuosity. (Early on in Conversations With Friends, Frances, the heroine, sleeps with Nick, a married man, and taking the bus home afterwards, sits at the back near the window, where “the sun bore down on my face like a drill and the cloth of the seat felt sensationally tactile against my bare skin”. Rooney’s ability to unpack a thought or feeling without forfeiting economy is one of the great strengths of her writing.) Continue reading...
With a hit Netflix series and The Fran Lebowitz Reader now published in the UK, the American wit talks about failing to write, her dislike of Andy Warhol and her best friend Toni MorrisonFran Lebowitz is a famous writer who famously doesn’t write. “I’m really lazy and writing is really hard and I don’t like to do hard things,” she says, and it’s the rare writer who would not have some sympathy with that. Yet, as all writers also know, writer’s block, which the 70-year-old has suffered from for four decades now, is never really about laziness. Lebowitz’s editor Erroll McDonald (“the man with the easiest job in New York”) has said she suffers from “excessive reverence for the written word”.Given that Lebowitz has, at last count, more than 11,000 of them in her apartment, there is no question that she loves books. “I would never throw away a book – there are human beings I would rather throw out of the window,” she says. So is this talk of “excessive reverence” a euphemistic way of saying that she has low self-esteem and doesn’t think she can write anything good enough to commit to print? Continue reading...
Farrell and Stephen Graham star in the gritty new thriller about an 1850s whaling ship. However, the drama wasn’t confined to the screen …Nothing shocked me about The North Water,” says Colin Farrell, stroking his straggly beard. “If I want to be shocked, I’ll go out at 3am and see someone homeless in the street. That’s shocking because it demonstrates apathy that results in abject cruelty. This has blood, seal and whale killings, murder, rape, mayhem. But however brutal that seems, it’s a film set. It’s all artifice.”Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...
Kelly Gibson and Lee Rogers, parents of Gracie-May Rogers, are wanted on suspicion of abductionA two-year-old girl has been abducted and taken to Spain, Lancashire constabulary have said.Police have launched an urgent appeal for Gracie-May Rogers and said her parents, Kelly Gibson and Lee Rogers, were wanted on suspicion of child abduction. Continue reading...
by Rebecca Ratcliffe South east Asia correspondent on (#5NVPQ)
Cambodia to send inspectors to see if site is too similar to 12th-century complex that is a national symbolA temple complex being constructed in the north-east of Thailand has become mired in controversy, after it was claimed the design was an attempt to replicate Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious monument.The Cambodian government reportedly plans to send archaeologists and temple architects to inspect whether the site is too similar to Angkor Wat, the national symbol depicted on the country’s flag. Continue reading...
by Jessica Murray Midlands correspondent on (#5NVBG)
Residents evacuated as plume of smoke seen rising above industrial estate in Warwickshire townOne person is unaccounted for after reports of explosions in a large fire at an industrial premises in Warwickshire, police have said.Residents in Leamington Spa were evacuated as a plume of thick smoke could be seen rising above the fire on Juno Drive on an industrial estate in the town. Continue reading...
Flights from Kabul resume with fresh urgency amid fears of further terrorist attacks after Thursday’s bombing• Afghanistan withdrawal – live updatesAnxious crowds of Afghans still hoping to join the western evacuation airlift from Kabul have crowded airport gates less than a day after scores were killed in a devastating Islamic State double bombing.As flights from Afghanistan resumed with fresh urgency on Friday, amid fears that the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) affiliate could attack again, more countries announced they had completed their evacuations with only days to go before the deadline for withdrawal by US-led troops. Continue reading...
Residents in Leamington Spa are being evacuated after reports of explosions in a large blaze at an industrial premises. A plume of thick smoke could be seen rising above the fire on Juno Drive on an industrial estate in the Warwickshire town.Warwickshire fire service said it was called at 10.39am on Friday to a large building fire and urged people living within 70 metres of the area to keep doors and windows closed
by Josh Halliday North of England correspondent on (#5NVEH)
Manchester City defender will spend at least weekend behind bars after bail application refusedThe Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy has been remanded in custody after appearing in court charged with four counts of rape and a sexual assault.The French international defender is accused of offences against three women, including one aged under 18, a court heard on Friday. Continue reading...
After lockdown some businesses understand better how flexible working hours enhance productivityA three-hour break in the middle of the working day for a languorous lunch, followed by a restorative nap sounds like the Mediterranean dream, but employers in Spain are increasingly moving away from this rigid schedule, which for many workers feels more like a nightmare.The merits of introducing the siesta in the UK have been hotly debated this week after the National Trust unveiled plans to move towards “Mediterranean working hours” at some sites in the south-east, to help cope with rising annual temperatures. Continue reading...
Alister Jack says government could allow vote if support for referendum stays above 60% for long periodThe UK government could approve a second Scottish independence referendum if support for staging one stays above 60% for a sustained period, Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, has said.Jack said consistent support for a fresh vote would confirm to the government that one was justified, as he signalled a further softening of the Conservatives’ previously rigid rejection of Scottish National party demands for a second referendum. Continue reading...
With Switzerland now on the travel green list, it’s the perfect time to head for the hills. But if lockdown has left you struggling for fitness, an e-bike can take the strain out of the climbs‘C’est magnifique!” exclaims Armand. Before us lies Switzerland’s Imperial Crown, a spectacular array of five 4,000-metre peaks, with the Matterhorn looming just beyond. Armand and I have reached our magnificent viewpoint after a 1,000-metre climb on e-mountain bikes from the pretty village of Grimentz.I’m one of a group of seven riders on the Haute Route, a week-long, 250km off-road adventure from Chamonix to Zermatt, in the charge of local guides Adrià and Vince. Continue reading...
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced New Zealand was ending further flights into Kabul, due to the continuing threat of terrorist attacks. The announcement followed an attack at the airport on Thursday that killed least 60 Afghans and 13 US soldiers.Ardern said she did not know how many visa holders from Afghanistan remained in the country, nor how many of those registered on SafeTravel managed to get out, but said New Zealand had not given up on trying to bring visa-holders home
A celebration of the brains behind some of the small screen’s biggest and best shows, including The Wire, Grey’s Anatomy and FriendsSince graduating from the US remake of The Office, Schur has done more than anyone to develop its ethos of making comedy that’s cool without being unkind. He was the boss of Parks and Recreation, which recovered from a so-so start to become truly beloved. Then The Good Place wowed us with primary colours and slyly intelligent philosophising. He co-created Brooklyn Nine-Nine, too. Continue reading...
From spinach to sandwiches, here’s how to reclaim your freezer from loose peas and crystal-encrusted lollies, to instantly improve your life in the kitchenIf there is one skill I wish I was better at, it’s freezer optimisation. Right now, my freezer is a mess of ice cubes and lollies and roughly a ton of loose peas, leaving me without enough room to freeze things that are actually useful. Getting your freezer organised is a great idea, so allow me to list all the things you can freeze, but probably don’t. Honestly, this list is as much for me as it is for you. Continue reading...
Reports of forced labour and severe punishments for detainees add to growing evidence of abuses worsening during the pandemicDetainees in North Korea are forced into gruelling manual labour and beaten so severely it may be a form of torture, the UN has said, as it warned that Covid-19 had exacerbated human rights concerns in the notoriously oppressive country.In a report to be presented at the UN general assembly in September, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said fresh accounts given to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) had added to “a growing body of information confirming consistent patterns of human rights violations”. Continue reading...
Visitors will be able to climb to top of 200-year-old tower, which is oldest three-sided obelisk in the worldAn outrageously tall monument paying tribute to the Duke of Wellington is now in better shape than it has ever been in its chequered 200-year history, the National Trust believes.After a complicated £3.1m restoration of the monument, which stands 53 metres (175ft) high, visitors will be able to climb the long, winding staircase to the top again, the trust said on Friday. Continue reading...
La Barraca de Cine has spent the past year roving its way around dozens of communities across the countryStretching six metres and painted turquoise, the trailer has trundled across Spain, making its way to mountaintop villages, cobblestone plazas and medieval historical centres. No matter the location, the process starts much in the same way: with the unfurling of a giant screen.“Our motto is cinema for everyone and anywhere,” said Patricia de Luna, one of the co-founders of La Barraca de Cine, a roving cinema that has made its way to dozens of villages across Spain in the past year. “Those evenings of cinema with family, friends and that shared experience with those around you – that’s the magic we want to create.” Continue reading...
An Instagram account had called on people to get involved in the Queen Street demonstrationA one-person anti-lockdown protest in central Auckland has been shut down, after the police were alerted to discussions of a potential gathering on social media.New Zealand police said officers were on Queen Street on Friday after hearing a protest was being planned, but only one person arrived with the intention of protesting, Newshub reported. Continue reading...
Joe Biden left with no good options after deadliest day for US troops in Afghanistan in more than a decadeThe tempting comparison between the withdrawals of US forces from Kabul in 2021 and Saigon in 1975 has offered diminishing returns over the past 12 days.Whereas about 7,000 people were evacuated from Vietnam (5,500 Vietnamese civilians and about 1,500 Americans), more than 95,000 people have left Afghanistan in a historic airlift since 14 August, the day before the capital fell to the Taliban. Continue reading...
Friday: Dozens killed, including US soldiers, in two suicide bombs near Kabul airport. Plus: Australian swimmers and cyclists add to Tokyo Paralympics haulGood morning. Two powerful blasts have killed dozens at Kabul’s international airport as the foreign evacuation flights are being wound down. Australia’s national cabinet today will review the updated advice on cautious reopening from the Doherty Institute. And we have a list of things to try to find some joy on the gloomy days of lockdowns.Two powerful suicide bombs and a gunman hit one of the main entrances to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai international airport, killing at least 60 civilians and 12 US soldiers just hours after western intelligence agencies warned of an imminent and “very credible” terrorist threat. The explosions disrupted a last-ditch attempt to evacuate about 200 Afghan guards of the British embassy, leaving them increasingly frightened about their future. As foreign governments’ evacuations are nearing the end, a former security guard supervisor at Australia’s shuttered embassy in Kabul has issued a personal plea to Scott Morrison for help, saying 1,000 men, women and children are stranded outside the airport. “We have been five days now with the visa you sent us on Sunday night,” the man says in a statement addressed to the prime minister and seen by the Guardian. “Please, we are begging you to save us.” Continue reading...
Gen Kenneth F McKenzie confirmed the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) had taken responsibility for the suicide bomb attacks at Kabul's airport and the US would take action against those behind it.Two suicide bombs exploded near the main entrances to the airport hours after western intelligence agencies warned of an imminent and 'very credible' terrorist threat; the Pentagon confirmed that they expect attacks to continue
A project to reinforce the Millennium tower foundation came to a halt after it was found the building had sunk an inchSan Francisco’s notorious sinking luxury high-rise is still sinking, even amid a $100m project designed to fix the issue.Work to reinforce the foundation of Millennium tower in the city’s downtown came to a halt this week, after engineers found the building had sunk 1in in the months since work began. Engineers were working on reinforcing the foundation of the tower to prevent additional tilting and sinking. Continue reading...
Analysis: Affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, poses ‘acute’ and ‘persistent’ threat, says USThe claim of responsibility from the Islamic State for the devastating suicide bombing at Kabul airport came as little surprise to analysts. The organisation’s affiliate in Afghanistan known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), had been pointed to as the prime suspect immediately after the blast.The IS official Amaq news agency said on its Telegram channel that a member called Abdul Rahman al-Logari carried out “the martyrdom operation near Kabul Airport”. The name suggests the killer of at least 12 US servicemen and more than 60 civilians was Afghan. Continue reading...
Study reveals the vast patch of warm water has produced a dry ridge of high pressure across the south Pacific, blocking storms from reaching ChileA vast patch of warming water off the coast of New Zealand – referred to as a “warming blob” – has contributed to a decade long drought affecting parts of South America, according to scientists.Researchers based in New Zealand and Chile have examined the rapidly warming hot blob which rose to prominence in 2019 after spikes in water temperature of up to 6C were recorded. Continue reading...
Following in Beyoncé’s footsteps, the singer’s new short film suggests that a clothing concept that originated with Princess Diana is no longer relevantHas the pandemic killed off the “revenge dress”? This week, Kacey Musgraves teased her new album and short film Star-Crossed. The releases come after her divorce and there are deep echoes of Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Billed as a “tragedy told in three acts”, the film uses fashion to tell her breakup story, but there is no “revenge dress” look.Instead, we saw Musgraves in a number of outfits that seemingly semaphore a mix of tragedy and catharsis. There’s a wedding dress that is worn subversively with some extra high heels and bejewelled eyebrows. There’s a smattering of red tulle, a balaclava and some angel wings. A closeup image of a corset with a tiny sword through it was posted to her Instagram page after the teaser dropped. Continue reading...
by Ryn Jirenuwat and Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok on (#5NTCZ)
Manhunt for Thitisan Utthanaphon followed allegation he tortured suspect to death to extort moneyA Thai police chief accused of torturing and killing a suspected drug dealer while in custody, allegedly in an attempt to extort tens of thousands of pounds, has been arrested following a manhunt.Thitisan Utthanaphon, 39, who has been removed from his position as superintendent of Muang police station in Nakhon Sawan, north of Bangkok, is accused of trying to extract 2m baht (£44,463) from the suspect. He disappeared days before a video of the incident went viral on social media, but was detained by police on Thursday. Continue reading...
Extradition request from Spain for Clara Ponsatí was halted after she move to BelgiumAn extradition case against a Catalan academic and independence campaigner, Clara Ponsatí, has been dropped by a Scottish court after she moved to Belgium.A sheriff in Edinburgh halted an extradition request from the Spanish government against Ponsatí, who had been elected to the European parliament in January 2020, after agreeing the court no longer had any jurisdiction in her case. Continue reading...
As well as rebooting the horror classic, the 31-year-old is directing a Marvel movie with a $100m-plus budget. No wonder she’s never risked saying ‘Candyman’ five times“Say it,” implore the posters for the new Candyman sequel, referring to the urban myth that the hook-handed ghost of the title can be summoned by repeating his name five times in front of a mirror. But Nia DaCosta will not say it: “Oh hell, no.” She is shaking her head. “Never have done, never will.” Despite having written and co-directed the film, DaCosta isn’t taking any chances. “In fact, when I was watching auditions, I would get a little freaked out so I’d stop the audition before they said it all five times. So silly,” she admits, laughing at herself. But she is not superstitious, she insists. “It’s just that one bit. Nothing [else] about it scares me at this point. Except … I’m just not gonna put myself in the space for my brain to play tricks on me.”Related: Candyman review – BLM horror reboot is superb confection of satire and scorn Continue reading...
Campaigners and union leaders praise accord, which replaces one agreed after 2013 Rana Plaza fireCampaigners have hailed a new agreement designed to protect garment workers in Bangladesh, signed by the likes of H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara and Bershka.The accord replaces another agreement signed by more than 200 international fashion companies after the Rana Plaza factory fire in 2013, in which more than 1,100 people died. For the first time, these companies faced legal action if their health and safety standards were found lacking or if they did not address problems in an agreed time period. More than 38,000 inspections have been carried out since 2013, and nearly 200 factories have lost their contracts owing to poor safety standards. Continue reading...
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