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Rescuers used boats and excavators to try to guide 10m-long sea mammal to deeper waters A humpback whale stranded on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast since early this week has freed itself and swum into deeper waters, rescuers said on Friday. A flotilla of vessels were following the weakened animal at a distance, hoping to help guide it into the North Sea and toward the Atlantic Ocean, its natural habitat. Continue reading...

Reform UK had asked GMP to investigate allegations of corrupt voting after ‘concerningly high levels’ of so-called family voting Police have found no evidence of criminality in the Gorton and Denton byelection after claims by Nigel Farage that it was “a victory for cheating”. Greater Manchester police (GMP) had been asked by Reform UK to investigate allegations of corrupt voting in the Greater Manchester contest, which was won by the Green party. Continue reading...

Ex-first lady wasn’t near ‘negligent discharge’ and agent is now in hospital while Secret Service investigates incident Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A US Secret Service agent, working on security detail for the former first lady Jill Biden, shot themself in the leg at the Philadelphia international airport on Friday morning, an agency spokesperson said. The Secret Service special agent suffered a “non-life-threatening injury” after they discharged their weapon at around 8.30am. Biden was not near the agent at the time and no one else was injured. Continue reading...

Female named Rounder was surrounded by family members and others as she was about to give birth to her second calf Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn. A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023. Continue reading...

Promotion of beauty products to young girls may fuel compulsive habits and potential health risks, says watchdog Italian regulators are investigating Sephora and Benefit Cosmetics over the apparent use of “covert marketing strategies” to sell beauty products to young girls that might be fuelling an unhealthy skincare obsession called “cosmeticorexia”. The Italian Competition Authority said it was looking into promotions for skincare products such as face masks, serums and anti-ageing creams that in some cases appeared to target girls under 10. Continue reading...

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Royal Court theatre, London A class on The Crucible unearths troubling parallels for a group of teen girls in Kimberly Belflower’s play set in the wake of the Weinstein scandal Kimberly Belflower’s revisionist take on Arthur Miller’s classic The Crucible re-spins the witch-hunts for the #MeToo generation. A classroom of teenagers – mostly girls – want to set up a feminist club, which is sparked, you assume, by the news headlines. Set in 2018, it is an original way to deal with adolescent girlhood in the direct fallout of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, although the play takes a while to gather power. Beth (Holly Howden Gilchrist) is the class swot; Ivy (Clare Hughes) has a father accused of inappropriate behaviour at work; Nell (Lauryn Ajufo) is the new girl; Raelynn (Miya James) is a pastor’s daughter whose ex-boyfriend cheated on her with Shelby (Sadie Soverall). The last of these is key to proceedings but is absent from school – and this play – for quite a while. Continue reading...

The popular fitness trend is all over social media, and curious, I tried a few classes – they left me totally out of air I have spent years in and out of the gym, trying the latest fitness trends. Consequently, my social media feed often populates with shirtless, sweaty men promising to transform my workouts. Then it started. First, it was the occasional video of athletes grinding through a series of Herculean tasks: pushing plate-laden sleds, collapsing over rowing machines, sprinting laps and throwing weighted balls at a wall inside of what looked like an aircraft hangar. That trickle became an avalanche, and I became curious. Continue reading...

From alcohol-free fizz to sips as dirty and spicy as they come – quench your seasonal thirst with these twisted classics From alcohol-free kir royal at the top to punchy pours toward the bottom, we have all your spring sips covered. Continue reading...

Campaigner criticises ‘shortsighted and self-defeating’ decision and says it increases risk to the UK public The polio virus was detected in London sewage for the second time this year, days before ministers withdrew funding for global polio eradication efforts. Its detection reveals the spending cuts to be “shortsighted and self-defeating”, campaigners said. Polio is an extremely infectious viral disease, which typically affects young children under-five. It can cause paralysis by damaging nerves in the spine and base of the brain, and can be life-threatening if it affects muscles used for breathing. Continue reading...

London mayor could however join the House of Lords while still remaining in his current role Allies of Sadiq Khan have dismissed reports the London mayor could join Keir Starmer’s cabinet after being made a peer, although it remains possible he could join the Lords while keeping his current job. Downing Street said reports that Khan could become a peer after crucial elections in May across England, Scotland and Wales were “speculation”, while a Labour source also declined to comment. Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Pass the paracetamol because Football Daily’s neck is in absolute bits. Two penalty shootouts at the same time will do that to you, eyes bouncing from Wales’s heartbreak in Cardiff to the Republic of Ireland’s agony in Prague. Alas, neither will feature at the Geopolitics World Cup after their playoff semi-final defeats. For Ireland, it’ll be a minimum of 28 years between appearances at the big show. At least they’ll always have Troy Parrott’s glorious week in November. For Wales, it’s … ah, the long wait ended at the Human Rights World Cup in 2022. Never mind. Continue reading...

Team make gesture before loss to Nigeria in Turkey Attack on Iranian school killed more than 175 people Iran’s players wore black armbands and held schoolbags as their anthem played before a friendly in Turkey on Friday in what a team official said was a protest over the killing of schoolgirls on the first day of the US-Israel war on Iran. Iran were facing Nigeria in the resort town of Belek before the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, where their participation is in doubt over the conflict. Continue reading...

Paul Quinn denies raping woman in case where previous suspect Andrew Malkinson had conviction quashed A man accused of a 2003 rape for which an innocent person spent 17 years in jail has told a court he “wouldn’t be able to live with myself” if he had carried out the attack. Paul Quinn, 51, denies raping the woman, in a case that led to what jurors heard was a “most terrible” miscarriage of justice. Continue reading...

Allan Leighton predicts food prices will inevitably rise, as group’s full-year profits dive by a third to £764m Asda’s executive chair has called on the government to “stand up and start doing stuff” to support farmers and ease the price of fuel as he warned that food prices would inevitably rise as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. Allan Leighton said farmers were under pressure but the supermarket had so far received “a trickle of requests not an avalanche” of cost price increases from its suppliers, as they were under pressure from higher fertiliser, energy and fuel costs. Continue reading...

Meet the influencers encouraging us to stop buying new Anna Kilpatrick doesn’t have a bedroom. Or even a bed. The a 52-year-old content creator from East Sussex sleeps on a wide shelf in her hallway so that her two children, 21 and 18, can have their own rooms. And yet, she says, she has “enough”. She doesn’t hanker after a bigger house or shinier car. “Having fewer things is freedom,” she says. Kilpatrick, who shares such ideas with her 104K Instagram followers (@not.needing.new), is part of a small but growing community of “enough-luencers”. The concept is similar to deinfluencing – where content creators discourage followers from buying into trends – but is also about celebrating already having enough, and, crucially, feeling happier for it. In her new book, Not Needing New: A Practical Guide to Finding the Joy of Enough, Kilpatrick lists the benefits of living with less: “An increased sense of calm, less anxiety through clutter, free time away from maintaining the home, a healthier bank balance and reduced debt, children who are learning how to manage delayed gratification.” Continue reading...

Guidelines puts focus on lighting and CCTV so people feel more confident walking and exercising in public Reetta Vaahtoranta used to go running in the evening along the Greenway, a four-mile (7km) pathway stretching across east London. But increasingly, she found herself receiving unwanted attention from lone male passersby. She switched her running clothes to baggier options, because “the less attractive and weirder you look, the less likely you are to get people following you”. “In the end, I just decided it was not worth it to come jogging here after dark,” she said. “If I know it can be a bit dodgy, then I just stop doing it. Which is a shame because in the centre of the borough there aren’t that many green spaces.” Continue reading...

Experts see potential hallmarks of Iranian involvement in firebombing of four ambulances in Golders Green on Monday To some it was the moment the mask slipped. Wearing an open-necked white shirt, Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was filmed last March fondly reminiscing with an interviewer from the Tehran-based Dibdan Iran news website about the assassinations he had organised around Europe. There was Prince Shahriar Shafiq, the last Shah of Iran’s 34-year-old nephew, who was shot twice in the head outside his mother’s home in Paris in 1979. Continue reading...

Experts recommend extremely limited use for children under-two amid ‘mounting evidence’ of harmful impact The government has issued new guidance on how much time children below the age of five should spend on screens. Childrens’ relationships with screens have become one of the key struggles of 21st-century parenting, along with the impact of the content that appears on those devices. The guidance has been developed by a panel led by the children’s commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, and children’s health expert Prof Russell Viner. Continue reading...

Cuts of nearly 70% may force university departments to close and damage UK’s research progress, senior scientists say British physicists have shaped our understanding of nature and the universe for more than a century, uncovering the building blocks of matter and furthering our knowledge on cosmic puzzles from the big bang to black holes. But senior scientists warned on Friday that the field of particle theory faces an existential threat after universities were informed of savage cuts to research. Brian Cox, the TV scientist and professor at the University of Manchester, said the impact amounted to the “destruction of the future”. Continue reading...

Microglossum cyanobasis – or blue-based earthtongue – is only the second such specimen ever to be found in Europe The discovery of a rare, tongue-shaped fungus is being hailed as a sign of the crucial ecological value of England’s national nature reserves. Never before recorded in the UK, the blue-based earthtongue, also known as Microglossum cyanobasis, was found sprouting at the Kingley Vale national nature reserve in West Sussex. Continue reading...

Force issues strongly worded rebuttal after Tory former cabinet minister alleges ‘egregious failures’ in call for review The police force that conducted the investigation into Lucy Letby has made a strongly worded public statement rejecting criticism after David Davis called in parliament for a review of the case. The Conservative former cabinet minister, who last year said that Letby had suffered “a clear miscarriage of justice”, said Cheshire constabulary had approached the investigation into deaths of babies at the Countess of Chester hospital with too much focus on suspecting Letby, and made “egregious failures” in not following guidelines and best practice, including in the appointment of expert witnesses. Continue reading...

Will the great TV writer ever top his mega hit? He talks us through his new series about the CIA’s attempts to weaponise LSD – and reveals why James Gandolfini called him ‘Satan’ Last week, a plush London hotel became a temple to HBO Max. Pictures of Carrie Bradshaw lined the corridors, HBO Max cushions dotted every chair in sight, and a heaving roster of A-list talent – Lisa Kudrow, Noah Wyle and Steve Carell – were poised and ready to hustle for the streamer’s UK launch. However, you could argue that this whole circus was constructed because of one man. A few decades ago, HBO was a little-seen backwater of sport and standup. One show propelled it to the forefront of prestige television. That show was The Sopranos. The man who created it is David Chase. Continue reading...

After years of skits and Shakespeare, the Black Country performer has found his biggest audience yet on Saturday Night Live UK. Phil Wang and others hail his ‘pure comedic instinct’ A cast of unknowns, they keep saying about Saturday Night Live UK, whose success we’ve all been toasting this last seven days. But many of its stars have been known to comedy- and theatre-watchers for years, none more so than breakout star George Fouracres, he of the viral “What kind of Irish is your grandad?” video and of put-upon Keir Starmer cowering by his hotline to Trump. Over the last decade, Fouracres, 36, has made waves as a sketch comic, a solo performer and a Shakespearean actor at the Globe – playing Hamlet, no less. “To everyone who’s known George since he started performing,” says his old sketch partner, the standup Phil Wang, “this week has been no surprise at all. It was just a matter of time before everyone got to see how talented he is.” I first encountered Fouracres in 2015 alongside Wang and Jason Forbes as one-third of Daphne, the then-latest – but highly distinctive – sketch group off the Cambridge Footlights production line. “From the beginning,” says Wang, “he had this real mastery of comedic timing, tone and just pure comedic instinct. I’d write parts for him at university” – including Long John Silver in a Footlights panto – “and the first time he read it out he got it if not exactly how I’d imagined it, then better than I’d imagined it. He just has this instinct for funny.” With Daphne, whose success on the fringe led to a Radio 4 series, Fouracres always drew the eye (or ear), a combustible performer from whom (whether as a pirate, a ruthless Willy Wonka or an unhinged northerner parody of Daphne from Frasier) you never quite knew what was coming next. Continue reading...