Anneliese Dodds says the honour for Mohamed Mansour appears clearly tied to his APS5m donation to the Tories
Rishi Sunakas decision to hand a knighthood to a businessman and former Egyptian government minister who donated APS5m to the Conservative party is the sign of a prime minister who asimply believes heas on the way outa, Labour has said.
Mohamed Mansour, a senior treasurer of the Tory party for just over a year, was among surprise recipients of honours unexpectedly announced late on Thursday, who also included a series of Conservative MPs.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Territoryas government calls for visit to listen to those thought to be living with consequences of forced fitting of IUDs
The Danish health minister should aget on a plane and visita some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenlandas gender equality minister has said.
In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.
Continue reading...Civilians and military personnel killed and injured in strike targeting Hezbollah weapons depots, says Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Today marks one year since WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained by Russia on 29 March 2023.
The 32-year-old American journalist has been held in the infamous Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow on the grounds of espionage charges that are entirely unsupported by evidence, Julian Borger reports.
Continue reading...Actor speaks for first time about how 10-year-oldas death in 2000 spurred him and others to aaim furthera
The actor John Boyega has spoken for the first time of the alife-changinga impact of his friendship with Damilola Taylor and the way his sudden death spurred him and others to aaim furthera.
Boyega, 32, best known for his work in the Star Wars franchise, was school friends with Damilola growing up in south-east London. Damilola was 10 when he was stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle walking home from a computer class in Peckham in November 2000.
Continue reading...Rakeem Thomas remanded in custody after incident near Beckenham that left victim in critical condition
A teenager has been charged with attempted murder after a stabbing on a train in south London.
British Transport Police said they received reports of two men fighting between Beckenham and Shortlands railway stations shortly before 4pm on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Storm Nelson brings 50mph gusts, rail lines hit by flooding and roads expected to be busy
Millions of people in the UK are expected to hit the roads on Good Friday, as strong winds from the Spanish-named Storm Nelson hit the start of the Easter getaway.
The ferry company DFDS reported that its services at Dover were running with delays adue to strong winds in the Channela as the long weekend got under way, with 2 million British holidaymakers scheduled to travel abroad.
Continue reading...Online footage show jet on fire as Ukrainian security expert claims it was shot down
Russia said on Friday that major powers needed a new approach to North Korea, accusing the United States and its allies of ratchetting up military tensions in Asia and seeking to astranglea the reclusive state.
Since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has gone out of its way to parade a renaissance of its relationship - including military ties - with Pyongyang.
Continue reading...Afghan regimeas return to public stoning and flogging is because there is ano one to hold them accountablea for abuses, say activists
The Talibanas announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international communityas silence, human rights groups have said.
Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Womenas Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Continue reading...Rights groups say Antonina Favorskaya is accused of links to Alexei Navalnyas aextremist organisationa and is one of six journalists held this month
A journalist who filmed the last video of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before he died, Antonina Favorskaya, has been detained by authorities.
Favorskaya covered the trials of Navalny for several years and media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday she was one of six journalists across the country held this month.
Continue reading...Dan Dafydd, who accidentally ordered 80 cases of eggs, aims to raise APS20,000 for the RNLI by Easter Sunday
For a small shop owner on a small island as far as mistakes go, Dan Dafyddas was a pretty big one leaving him with quite a dilemma: how do you get rid of 80 cases of Easter eggs when you meant to order only 80 eggs?
For Dafydd, the owner of Sinclair General Stores on Sanday, one of the Orkney islands (population approximately 500), the 720 eggs were enough to feed everyone almost twice over. A few too many even for those with a sweet tooth.
Continue reading...Traditional affinity between Conservatives and the newspaper has given way to a complex, splintered drama, and the attempted acquisition by Gulf-backed RedBird IMI lies in limbo
With the Conservative party trailing Labour by nearly 20 points in the polls, it needs all the help it can get if it is going to have a fighting chance at the next election.
So Downing Street strategists privately wonder why the Daily Telegraph a arguably the UKas most staunchly rightwing paper a is not being more supportive of Rishi Sunak in its coverage.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territoryas trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israelas onslaught on Gazaas ecosystems has made the area unlivable
In a dilapidated warehouse in Rafah, Soha Abu Diab is living with her three young daughters and more than 20 other family members. They have no running water, no fuel and are surrounded by running sewage and waste piling up.
Like the rest of Gazaas residents, they fear the air they breathe is heavy with pollutants and that the water carries disease. Beyond the city streets lie razed orchards and olive groves, and farmland destroyed by bombs and bulldozers.
Continue reading...The US journalist was seized by officials and charged with espionage, and friends and family say he has kept his spirits up
Friday marks the grim first anniversary of the day when masked Russian officers grabbed Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist, at a steakhouse in Yekaterinburg where he was waiting to eat on a reporting trip.
Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has not seen a day of freedom since. He has been held in the infamous Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow, where the Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once detained.
Continue reading...The Harry Potter and Bridget Jones star is a dazzlingly versatile performer, with a string of Michael Winterbottom films under her belt, as well as Star Wars, TVas Happy Valley and an Olivier award. She explains how she keeps on top of it all
It is easy to feel protective of Shirley Henderson on this gloomy winter afternoon. Is she warm enough? Does she want to put the heating on? aAye, Iam OK,a she says from her home in Fife, a few strands of chestnut hair falling over her glasses as she huddles close to the laptop. aItas a wee bit blowy out. But Iam at the age where you can get too warm, so Iam all right.a Her giggle is helium-high: the sort of sound you want to trap, like in one of those toy moo boxes, so that you can play it when youare down in the dumps. Hearing Henderson laugh, or say aSorry darlina?a when she hasnat quite heard your question makes you feel as if youave been cuddled.
Her allusion to the menopause, though, takes a moment to sink in. Though 58, she looks barely old enough to be online without parental controls. (No suspension of disbelief was required when she played a mother who dresses as her own adolescent daughter to sit an exam in May Contain Nuts.) Henderson came to prominence in the 1990s as one of the UKas most probing, unpredictable character actors. After being spattered with excrement in Trainspotting, she won pivotal roles in two masterpieces: she was a soprano pining for her son in Mike Leighas Gilbert-and-Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy, and a feisty hairdresser smacking her lips at London life in the rhapsodic Wonderland. That was the first and best of her six collaborations with the director Michael Winterbottom, as well as the one which got her hooked on improvising.
Continue reading...People in Hiroshima react to first screening of the film, which was delayed after outrage at aBarbenheimera memes
It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer. The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history a the devastating culmination of the American physicistas work.
The film finally premiered in Japan on Friday, more than eight months after it opened in the US, to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer a the afather of the atomic bomba a to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in Hiroshima and, days later, Nagasaki in the final days of the Pacific war.
Continue reading...Some schoolkids are clearly nervous. One asked if Iad ever killed a child
Iave always been interested in the past. At school, I threw myself into history lessons. I turned one of my mumas bedsheets into a toga so I could pretend to be a Roman, and spent holidays learning hieroglyphics long after lessons on ancient Egypt had finished.
When I was eight, we did the Tudors at school, and my aunt took me to the Tower of London, not far from where I grew up in Thurrock, Essex. I was spellbound. Back home, Iad pore over my mumas Encyclopaedia Britannica, try to copy Hans Holbein portraits, and watch documentaries about Henry VIII over and over. There was just something magical about the Tudors.
Continue reading...Analysts say fastest growing part of market is for atalking pointa eggs, with some clocking in at 1kg
At Easter, people used to get excited if theirs came with a mug and a bag of sweets but those days are over, with social media stoking demand for talking point amega eggsa in fancy shapes and exotic flavours.
The choice is no longer just about the type: think ablondea, astrawberry-whitea or apistachioa flavour chocolate not bog-standard milk, dark and white. There is also a race to create the thickest and, ergo, most luxurious shells.
Continue reading...The increased use of AI to replicate the voice and movements of actors has benefits but some are concerned over how and when it might be used and who might be left short-changed
When she discovered her voice had been uploaded to multiple websites without her consent, the actor Cissy Jones told them to take it down immediately. Some complied. aOthers who have more money in their banks basically sent me the email equivalent of a digital middle finger and said: donat care,a Jones recalls by phone.
aThat was the genesis for me to start talking to friends of mine about: listen, how do we do this the right way? How do we understand that the genie is out of the bottle and find a way to be a part of the conversation or we will get systematically annihilated? I know that sounds dramatic but, given how easy it is to steal a personas voice, itas not far off the mark.a
Continue reading...Adam says if you put food in a cold oven it wonat cook evenly. Cathleen says it makes no difference. You decide whose argument is half-baked
Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
Recipes tell us to preheat for a reason a so that food will cook the way itas supposed to
We did a pizza taste test once and I couldnat tell the difference. I donat think Adam could either
Continue reading...When the research team at Vernadsky base are not defending their homeland, they are on the frontline of the climate crisis
When Ukraineas Antarctic research and supply vessel Noosfera left Odesa on its maiden voyage on 28 January 2022, it passed Russian warships in the Black Sea. A month later, Vladimir Putin launched Russiaas full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Noosfera has not been back since.
aA few weeks later, and Noosfera would have been an important symbolic target for Russia,a said Vadym Tkachenko, a biologist who recently completed his second Antarctic winter at Ukraineas Vernadsky base. The ship now supplies both Ukrainian and Polish Antarctic bases from Chile and South Africa twice a year, at the start and end of the winter.
Continue reading...Tom Power led an alliance that brought about the pioneering health initiative which has since been adopted by more than 70 countries a and has saved countless lives
Exactly 20 years ago an Irish civil servant named Tom Power won a remarkable battle against the tobacco industry when Ireland enacted the worldas first ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and workplaces.
TV crews from Japan, the US and elsewhere flocked to Dublin to record the events of 29 March 2004. No one knew what would happen. Would smokers revolt? Would pubs flout the law? Would a bold experiment go up in smoke?
Continue reading...He was a tough bouncer from Kent who, like the country around him, grew to accept social progress
My late dad was the hardest nightclub bouncer in a tough working-class area in Medway, Kent. He was a bodybuilder and terrifyingly quiet; you never quite knew what was going through his head.
My underage sixth-form mates knew he would refuse them entry if they tried to get into the sprawling, sticky floored and aggressively heterosexual nightclub where he worked the door with a formidable scowl. Luckily, I would sooner pour petrol in my eyes than set foot inside. He told me he broke the arms of any drunken louts giving him trouble. I believed him.
Gary Nunn is on X. Visit his free Substack here
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Continue reading...When it comes to studies, work or social abilities, some fared better than others. But the pandemic left its mark on all of us, whether we realise it or not
I recently came across a folder on my laptop labelled aCovida. Inside I found screenshots I had taken of the government website, showing daily cases, ICU admissions and deaths from Covid-19. These reports were released every weekday during the first lockdown, and each afternoon I would collect them in this folder and study them, trying to understand what was happening in the wider world a before I began a busy evening of Zoom birthday quizzes, Netflix Party and WhatsApp.
I was shocked a both that I had ever been so macabre in the first place, and also that, four years later, I had forgotten doing it. I donat remember being anxious or depressed during lockdown, but I have 60 image files suggesting otherwise.
Continue reading...Fundamental restructuring must happen, along with an honest debate about what a and who a higher education is really for
Imagine a beach before the tsunami. Out at sea, the wave is gathering force, yet on the sand people are still sunbathing, blissfully unaware. Thatas how it feels, one professor tells me, to be working in higher education. Academics by their nature donat look outwards much, he argues, so not all have registered the risk to their profession. aBut something absolutely dreadful is coming.a
As a scientist working in cancer research at a top British university, heas not the kind of academic I expected to be worried about the recent nationwide flurry of threatened redundancies in higher education, the scrapping of what, so far, are mainly arts and language courses, or shrill political attacks on supposedly awokea campus culture. But lately almost everyone in higher education seems jumpy.
Continue reading...Regulating cannabis use is no longer radical but an increasingly normalised strategy. The atough on drugsa approach is archaic
Germanyas cannabis reforms were approved this week, overcoming the final legislative hurdle when the Bundesrat, Germanyas upper house, voted through the bill that passed with a huge majority in the Bundestag (lower house) last month. Germany is a significant addition to the growing list of countries defecting from the drug war consensus that had held for more than half a century. More than half a billion people now live in jurisdictions establishing legal adult access to cannabis for recreational use.
When Germanyas new law comes into force on 1 April, it will decriminalise possession of up to 25g of cannabis for personal use (and up to 50g in the home), allow requests to remove criminal records for past possession offences, legalise home growing of up to three cannabis plants for personal use, and establish a regulatory framework for not-for-profit associations within which cannabis can be grown and supplied to members.
Continue reading...While religion doesnat feature much in video games, I find the theory that we are all characters in a huge sim ever more believable a and appealing
Itas Easter weekend, when Catholics like me spend hours in church listening to the extended editoras cut of a story whose ending we already know. Sitting there for the millionth performance of the Passion recently, I got to thinking about how few religious video game characters Iave ever encountered. Itas interesting that in a world where so many peopleas lives are dictated by religious beliefs, there is such a scarcity of religion in games. I mean, you could argue that all games are Jesus homages, with their respawns and extra lives, but even I admit thatas a stretch.
The Peggies in Far Cry 5 are a mind-controlling violent cult; those Founders in BioShock Infinite use religion to elevate and justify hatred of foreigners; and you have those wackadoodles in Fallout worshipping atomic bombs. Religion is almost exclusively used as means for leaders to get minions to do bad things. (Admittedly, they may be on to something here.) I guess that when so many video games are structured so as to set you up as a lone protagonist, up against a huge force, religion is a fairly obvious go-to villain.
Continue reading...Germans want to ban atorture breedinga for extreme characteristics. Plus: donat even think about swimming in British waters this Easter
Iall say this for the Germans: when theyare right, theyare so right. Word reaches us that dachshunds are to be banned in Germany.
Continue reading...If Thames Water collapses in the weeks ahead, there is only one smart, long-term response: public ownership
aC/ Adam Almeida is a senior data analyst at the thinktank Common Wealth
The question mark over the future of Britainas largest water supplier, Thames Water, has put its 16 million customers across London and south-east England a myself included a in an uncertain position. While water will still keep coming out of our taps, the price of these financial woes will probably be borne by customers and taxpayers. Meanwhile, Thames Wateras shareholders have spent the last three decades benefiting from the companyas massive financial gains. If ever we needed an example of the risks of selling essential infrastructure to investment firms, this is it.
Auditors warned in late 2023 that the debt-laden company could run out of money by April if shareholders did not inject it with much-needed cash. Now investors are saying they wonat provide Thames Water with APS500m of emergency funding, leading to speculation that the company will be temporarily renationalised.
Adam Almeida is a senior data analyst at the thinktank Common Wealth
Continue reading...Young people of driving age are being criticised by the rightwing press for arefusinga to drive. I say: leave those kids alone!
Being young has always been hard. Sure, it has its perks a more energy, first loves, first everythings a but I feel for the under-25s with still so many life hurdles left to clear. With the list of current social ills ranging from the housing crisis to social isolation and the any-day-now background note of environmental doom, I think itas fair to say itas not easy for young people today.
So when research last week from MoneySuperMarket found that driving age under-25s were costing their parents APS1,300 a year in additional fuel from being ferried around a sparking unpleasant commentary about feckless young people arefusinga to drive a I found myself thinking: aLeave the kids alone, theyare doing their best!a
Continue reading...Rules that favour spending on physical infrastructure over the public sector workforce should be overhauled
The UKas public services are in a state of near-collapse. Increased spending on health, care and social security is desperately needed, as the latest shocking poverty figures make painfully obvious. But while the NHS regularly tops votersa lists of concerns, and a majority of the public favours higher spending, most people do not pay much attention to the technical details of government accounting. In the run-up to an election and spending review, this should change. Rules as well as figures require scrutiny. Rachel Reevesas commitment to the principle that a Labour government should borrow to invest a but not otherwise a should concern everyone who wants to see the NHS, and the public realm more generally, restored.
So should the Treasuryas definition of investment. Traditionally, this refers to capital projects such as new transport links, hospital buildings or energy infrastructure. The point is that these are understood to provide long-term benefits that extend beyond service users to the wider economy. By contrast, and according to international accounting conventions, public money spent on salaries and other running costs comes under the heading of day-to-day (or current) expenditure. What this means, in practical terms, is that it is sometimes easier to get funding for a big scheme such as HS2 than for pay packets.
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