4 hours ago People urged to do at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week to lose weight

Review of 116 clinical trials finds less than 30 minutes a day, five days a week only results in minor reductionsPeople who want to lose meaningful amounts of weight through exercise may need to devote more than two-and-a-half hours a week to aerobic training such as running, walking or cycling, researchers say.The finding emerged from a review of 116 published clinical trials that explored the impact of physical exercise on weight loss, waist size and body fat. In total, the trials reported data for nearly 7,000 adults who were overweight or obese, meaning their body mass index (BMI) was more than 25. Continue reading...

Politics

4 hours ago ‘Wherever he sends us, we’re willing to go’: Annie and the Caldwells on God, gospel and a debut album 40 years in the making

Fearing pop would lead them to the devil, Annie Caldwell recruited her daughters into her band. They’re now sending audiences into ecstasy with disco-tinged soul gospelFrom West Point, MississippiRecommended if you like The Harlem Gospel Travelers, DJ Greg Belson’s Divine Disco compilationsUp next Single, Wrong, on 28 January. As-yet untitled debut album to followOn Instagram, you can find a clip of Annie and the Caldwells’ recent appearance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht: one of the band’s first performances outside America’s deep south. The Dutch festival is admirably eclectic and boundary-pushing – the bill this year ranged from Japanese noise-rockers Bo Ningen re-imagining the soundtrack of Jodorowsky’s 1973 surrealist classic The Holy Mountain to the self-styled “putrid, drug-filled gutter rock” of New York quintet Couch Slut – but even so, Annie and the Caldwells’ appearance looks extraordinary: a mother and her three middle-aged daughters, clad in matchin...

Politics

5 hours ago Miranda Hart admits it was love at first sight with husband Richard Fairs as she details their unorthodox meeting

In a candid new interview wth Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast on Thursday, the actress and comedian, 52, opened up about their 'extraordinary' first meeting.

Politics

5 hours ago Beyoncé at the Super Bowl: A look back at her unforgettable performances

Pop star brought out her 12-year-old daughter during her special halftime show on Christmas Day

Politics

6 hours ago Katt Williams, crypto and cat ladies: 2024 was the year of unexpected second chances

From comedy to courtroom drama, if you thought you’d seen it all before, that’s because this year you hadIf 2024 was defined by anything, it was a distinct feeling of deja vu. Donald Trump ran and won, Death Cab and Janet Jackson headlined music festivals, and aesthetes on social media lusted after Windows Vista design language circa 2007. Same old, same old – almost. Because 2024 was also the year of unexpected second chances: in some very special cases, those who suffered a fall from grace or otherwise unfortunate first run in the spotlight got another shot at glory. Call it a comeback, a redemption, or deja vu all over again for better or worse, it was their year once more. . Continue reading...

Events

8 hours ago Miranda Hart sweetly says she 'fell in love there and then' with her new husband

Miranda Hart has opened up about her 'extraordinary' first meeting with her new husband Richard Fairs after the couple tied the knot in a secret ceremony this summer

Politics

8 hours ago Squid Game season two is nowhere near as shocking as the first – but isn’t that the point?

It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try

Events

9 hours ago Raging Rangers fan board blast SFA chiefs over 'mocking disdain' in VAR row and call for independent refs review

The group backed the Ibrox club's hardline stance as the Cup final fury continues

Politics

9 hours ago The 2010s are glorified by gen Z. But the ‘indie music’ of that era was unoriginal | Jamie Peck

So much of early 2000s ‘indie’ music was nothing but a backward-looking rerun of movements pastYou’ve probably noticed it by now: the smeared makeup in fashion editorials, the “messy girl” style of gen Z celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo, and the dance-y, LCD Soundsystem-esque sound of artists like the Dare and well, LCD Soundsystem, whose reunited lineup seems to be playing shows every night now.The no-longer-so-niche pop star Charli xcx further foregrounded it with her breakout hit Brat this past summer, an album whose inescapable promotional cycle improbably combined an embrace by the Harris/Walz presidential campaign – cue Jake Tapper trying to explain “brat summer” to your parents – and a birthday party photographed by none other than aughts-era shutter bug the Cobrasnake in his trademark high-flash, low-res style.Each artist fits the mold of a bygone trope. Ryan Adams was the self-professed ‘wannabe beat poet guy,’ fitting the chain-smoking mold of folk predecessors like Bob Dyl...

Events

10 hours ago Squid Game season two is nowhere near as shocking as the first – that’s the whole point

It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try

Events

10 hours ago We can be heroes: the inspiring people we met around the world in 2024 – part two

From those performing extraordinary acts in times of war to the woman changing views of children with disabilities, these people gave us hope in a tumultuous yearShe strode across the border, back straight, face raised towards the burning sky. A soldier from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) turned towards her. Continue reading...

Politics

11 hours ago Miranda Hart admits she immediately 'fell in love' with her husband Richard Fairs 'there and then'

In a candid new interview wth Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast on Thursday, the actress and comedian, 52, opened up about their 'extraordinary' first meeting.

Politics

11 hours ago And the Walls Became the World All Around by Johanna Ekström and Sigrid Rausing review – a dying writer’s journal

There is exquisite detail and piercing clarity in these observations from a writer’s notebooks as she faces terminal cancerAnd the Walls Became the World All Around, its title taken from a line in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, is gashed, keening, forensic. It has been finessed from 13 notebooks kept by the Swedish poet and artist Johanna Ekström who, just a week before she died of cancer in spring 2022, asked her friend Sigrid Rausing to transcribe them with a view to publication. Such an unusual – perhaps even onerous – request. Then again, Ekström’s parents were writers and literary grandees; Rausing is the publisher and former editor of Granta: no life without books.And the Walls is less about cancer than it is about winter. Early sections take place during the slowdown and muteness of the pandemic. Ekström’s mother Margareta is mute – unable to speak, or even read or write, after suffering a huge stroke in the mid-1990s. “N”, a translator with w...

Events

11 hours ago Rutherglen family enjoy party where Royalty and Santa Claus are guests

The Duchess is patron of disability charity Cerebral Palsy Scotland

Society

12 hours ago The Road Trip review – this icky romcom by numbers is oddly romance free

The first few episodes of this adaptation of Beth O’Leary’s novel feature zero chemistry between the leads. It’s one for fans of the genre onlyThe easiest way to describe The Road Trip would be to call it the TV equivalent of an airport novel. Perhaps that is because it is. Beth O’Leary has long kept the WH Smith industrial complex alive, with bestselling novels including The Flatshare, which sold more than 1m copies. That book was adapted into a six-part TV series in 2022, and followed two roommates thrust together by the fact that they rented the same bed – cleverly twisting the hellscape that is the London rental market into the stuff of a fluffy romcom. This one follows Dylan and Addie, a pair of exes thrust together by the fact that they have to use the same method of transport to get to a wedding 1,000 miles away. Like a rat, a potential love affair is never more than 6ft away in O’Leary’s world.This time, our star-crossed, claustrophobic pairing are Dylan and Addie, who are o...

Politics

14 hours ago ‘I get spotted in the M&S knicker department’: Lorraine Ashbourne on her 2024 TV takeover

From Bridgerton to Sherwood and Alma’s Not Normal, the actor has lit up our screens all year – and her ‘victory lap’ is only just starting Lorraine Ashbourne has had a massive year. “I know! People keep saying: oh God, Lorraine, get off the telly, we want somebody else,” she says. “But it has been extraordinary.” She kicked things off in January with ITV’s entertaining disaster thriller After the Flood, playing Sophie Rundle’s tough, grieving mother, Molly. As the year went on, she returned to two of her biggest and most significant roles yet, as the former secret spy cop Daphne Sparrow in Sherwood, and Grandma Joan in the wrenching, hilarious second series of Alma’s Not Normal. Has she ended up in such outstanding shows because she’s picky? “Absolutely not. I’ll do anything! I’m a cheap date. It’s just timing that these things have fallen into place.”Right now, Ashbourne is at home in north London. She grew up in Manchester, where she went to drama school. She met her husband, Andy...

Culture

15 hours ago Squid Game season two review – TV that will make you uncomfortably bloodthirsty indeed

When we get into the actual games, the smash-kit K-drama finds its feet. But it spends far too many episodes dragging its heels extremely painfully. Series three must do betterOne of Hollywood’s many bad habits is the bloat caused by splitting a story in half in a bid to double the profits (cough, cough, Dune and Wicked). Squid Game was always a perfect one-series story. Gambling addict Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) became Player 456, a desperate man who attempts to pay off his debts by taking part in a twisted underground fight-to-the-death competition. He beats the odds by surviving every one of its potentially fatal playground games. When it first appeared, it was horrifying, it was thrilling, and its satirical edge – which examined capitalism and class in South Korea – was clever and acidic. The world took to it in vast numbers.That it became one of Netflix’s most successful, and therefore most profitable, series of all time placed it in a creative bind. Inevitably, it was renewed...

Events

26 hours ago Doctor Who: Joy to the World on BBC One review: has its moments but the twist will leave you cringing

This Christmas special delves deeper into Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor but the latest incarnation of the Timelord still hasn’t quite found his groove

Science

28 hours ago Beyoncé at the Super Bowl: A history ahead of her Christmas Day halftime show

Pop star is preparing to perform a special halftime show on Christmas Day, where she will debut live versions of songs from her Grammy-nominated album ‘Cowboy Carter’

Culture