3 hours ago Dream journey: a nostalgic trip aboard the sleeper train from Amsterdam to Berlin

Taking the overnight train between the capital cities and on to Dresden is all about slow travel and the romance of life on the trackOn the evening of our overnight train journey from Amsterdam to Berlin and on to Dresden aboard the European Sleeper, we enjoy a restorative plate of oysters and steak tartare on the decks of Amsterdam’s BrasserieMarie overlooking the Amstel. Then, after a nightcap in the adjoining Freddy’s Bar, a legendary spot in the Hotel De L’Europe, we make the short stroll to Amsterdam Centraal Station for the so-called Good Night Train.At 22.20 we board the train to Berlin, the bunks are swiftly made up and the blinds part pulled down for sleep. You can open the window for fresh air, brush your teeth in your own basin and there is crisp, clean linen. This slow journey is all about the romance of life on the track – and, for me, a lingering nostalgia. Continue reading...

Politics

31 hours ago Terror watchdog lawyer says UK should consider allowing IS members to come home

UK woman Shamima Begum was disallowed to challenge the removal of her British citizenship at the Supreme Court in August last year.

Society

6 hours ago Premier League disciplinary charges make clubs rush to balance the books

This week PSR swings into action, with past points deductions against Everton and Forest a stark warningThe Premier League will issue disciplinary charges this week against any clubs it deems to have breached its profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) for the 2021-24 accounting period.Under a fast-track process introduced 18 months ago clubs who have recorded losses for the first two years of the reporting cycle were required to submit their accounts for the financial year ending June 2024 to the Premier League by 31 December. The Premier League has given its financial and legal departments 14 days to study the books of those clubs in danger of a PSR breach, and is expected to issue any charges on Monday and Tuesday. Continue reading...

Politics

8 hours ago Why abandoning Ukraine will usher in new world order in which great wars are inevitable

The current international legal order prohibits the use of force by countries to win territory. If this concept is shattered in Ukraine, a new world order based on threats and violence will emerge

Events

7 hours ago Elon Musk and the new world order: the hijacking of the global conversation

How can we publicly debate policy in the face of the rising – and polarising – influence of the X owner and others whose only aim is to serve themselvesHow should we as a society interact with one another, debate, come to decisions? What impels politicians to focus and act on one thing and not another?The Athenians had the Agora, where (male, slave-owning) citizens gathered to debate and decide the issues of the day. In the early 20th century, John Reith envisioned the BBC, in a most patrician way, as a space where the nation could come together to enhance the (supposedly) British values of democracy, reasonableness and debate. Continue reading...

Politics

8 hours ago Liz Truss legal letter to Sir Keir Starmer the latest disaster from joke that keeps on giving

Liz Truss, remember her?

Events

8 hours ago Simon Schama: ‘Britain is a much more tolerant place now. I’m Mr Sunshine on this’

The historian on taking the social pulse of the nation in his new TV series, why we’re such word addicts, and his fear that the needle in the US is moving towards redSimon Schama, 79, is a writer, television presenter and professor of history and art history at Columbia University in New York. His bestselling, prize-winning books include The Embarrassment of Riches, about the Dutch Golden Age, and Citizens, a study of the French Revolution. His television series for the BBC include A History of Britain, Simon Schama’s Power of Art, and The Story of the Jews. His new series, Simon Schama’s The Story of Us, traces the history of postwar Britain in an effort to locate the origins of the current culture wars and to celebrate the art that has united us in the past.How did you begin thinking about this series?Well, I live most of my time in America, but I come back here often and it always pierces me. I’m heartfelt about it. I wanted to take the social pulse of Britain, and I wanted to lo...

Politics

14 hours ago How taking a common painkiller could lead you to be more reckless, new research suggests

Scientists believe the dulling effect it has on pain has a similar impact on emotions and decision-making, leading those take the drug to throw caution to the wind.

Events

12 hours ago Labour must stop handing millions to Pakistan as country blocks removal of child sex abusers from Britain, former immigration minister claims

Robert Jenrick (left) has called for the financial aid to stop and for a visa ban to be implemented until the country cooperates with the deportation of citizens living in the UK such as Adil Khan (bottom right)

Politics

20 hours ago Joan Didion and Mike Davis understood LA through its fires. Even they didn’t predict this week

Fire is an inextricable part of the region’s identity, as the writers knew. But the way this divided city burns has been transformedTalking about fire and Los Angeles is an exercise in repetition. Southern California does have seasons, Joan Didion once noted in Blue Nights, among them “the season when the fire comes”.Fire in Los Angeles has a singular ability to shock, with its destruction that takes “grimly familiar pathways” down the canyons and into the subdivisions. The phrase comes from Mike Davis’s 1995 essay The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, and it is as true for the fires as for our talk of the fires. Even our reflections take on that grim familiarity: we cite Joan Didion citing Nathanael West. We fall in with the great writers of this great city who are always so ready to judge it. Continue reading...

Events

18 hours ago A Simple Favor director slams rumors that Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick feud has ‘shelved’ sequel

Online rumors claimed that Lively has ‘refused’ to promote the forthcoming sequel amid her messy legal battle with Justin Baldoni

Politics

20 hours ago Joan Didion and Mike Davis understood LA through its fires. Even they couldn’t predict this week

Fire is an inextricable part of the region’s identity, as the writers knew. But the way this divided city burns has been transformedTalking about fire and Los Angeles is an exercise in repetition. Southern California does have seasons, Joan Didion once noted in Blue Nights, among them “the season when the fire comes”.Fire in Los Angeles has a singular ability to shock, with its destruction that takes “grimly familiar pathways” down the canyons and into the subdivisions. The phrase comes from the writer and activist Mike Davis’s 1995 essay The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, and it is as true for the fires as for our talk of the fires. Even our reflections take on that grim familiarity: we cite Didion citing Nathanael West. We fall in with the great writers of this great city who are always so ready to judge it. Continue reading...

Events

20 hours ago Richard Price: ‘I don’t like to write, I just don’t – it’s too much anxiety’

The US novelist and co-writer of The Wire on why his new book isn’t about cops and robbers, his 80s drug addiction and the authors who have inspired himRichard Price, 75, is a screenwriter and author whose books include the 600-page drug-war epic Clockers (1992), which was filmed by Spike Lee and inspired the HBO crime drama The Wire, co-written by Price. Michael Chabon has called him “one of the best writers of dialogue in the history of American literature”. Born and raised in the Bronx, he lives in Harlem – the setting for his new novel, Lazarus Man, in which four strangers cross paths amid the collapse of a tenement block.The book’s acknowledgments mention its “incredibly long gestation”... I signed the contract to write this 17 years ago; if it was a baby, it’d now be applying to college. I’d just written Lush Life, a sort of panorama of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and I wanted to try to do the same for Harlem, but I’d only just moved there. New York City is 1,000 cities ...

Politics

23 hours ago ‘White people shouldn’t mess with it’: Native American church laments psychedelic cactus shortage

Western ‘psychedelic renaissance’ is partly to blame for dwindling supplies of peyote, which produces mescalineAldous Huxley wrote about the spiritual visions he had while taking the drug mescaline in The Doors of Perception, while Hunter S Thompson wrote of driving at 100mph while under the influence of it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.But now a growing number of western spiritual seekers dabbling in psychedelics are accused of causing a shortage of the plant that produces mescaline. Continue reading...

Events

25 hours ago How furious LA residents chased down 'arsonist' and restrained him with cable ties

In dramatic scenes involving a car chase and a citizens arrest, LA neighbours bandied together to pin a suspected arsonist down and restrain him with cable ties – as the city's worst ever fires raged

Politics

27 hours ago LA fires latest: Newsom calls for investigation into fire hydrant failures as death roll rises to 11

Palisades and Eaton fires continue to rage with more than 35,000 acres burned

Events

26 hours ago ‘There are a lot of bitter people here, I’m one of them’: rust belt voters on why they backed Trump again despite his broken promises

Many in Youngstown, Ohio, believe the president-elect will tackle the town’s decline this time. Others are worried about his character flaws. Their concerns help explain how he returned to power – and how his second term might play outThe last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America’s rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible.The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue collar boom town were coming back, he said. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. “We’re going to fill up those factories – or rip ”em down and build brand new ones.” Continue reading...

Politics

28 hours ago Steven Gerrard's real feelings about sharing granddad duties with 'drug cartel lieutenant'

Liam Byrne has major links to the Kinahan Cartel, who were one of Europe's biggest drug smugglers before they were hit with a $15million bounty by US authorities

Events

26 hours ago ‘It’s the moment when genius comes into the universe’: the film recreating SNL’s chaotic first night

A new drama recalls the wild first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Making it was as much of a high-wire act as the show itself, the film’s director Jason Reitman and stars revealThere is no show in history more obsessed with its own lore than Saturday Night Live. Almost every week the long-running sketch show is sprinkled with returning alumni and jokes that reference the show’s illustrious and controversial past: its social club status for the great and good of New York; the drug-fuelled deaths of its brightest lights such as John Belushi and Chris Farley; the superstars it created in Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey, to name but five of hundreds.SNL is so fabled that it’s already inspired scores of documentaries and numerous scripted TV shows based on it, including 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In February, there will be a three-hour primetime special celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary, an event likely to be more starry...

Politics

28 hours ago What happened to The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment? Child star and brother of Hannah Montana alum disappeared from Hollywood for 15 years after he was charged with drink driving and drug possession

Instead of perusing a career in acting like his famous sister, Haley decided to step back from Hollywood after often finding it 'aggressive, predatory and relentless'.

Events

28 hours ago Sailor Moon creative discusses challenges of bringing musical based on Japanese manga to the London stage

EXCLUSIVE Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is set to make its London debut in February and could pave the way for more shows in other cities

Politics

28 hours ago The curse of RuPaul's Drag Race: How queens featured on the hit reality show have been struck by early death, drug abuse and prison sentences

From their impressive lip sync battles to their hilarious Snatch Game impersonations, many Drag Race contestants have left an imprint on viewers' hearts.

Events

33 hours ago Weather maps show 10 UK cities set to be battered by more snow this month

The UK is set to see milder weather move in over the weekend but weather maps show parts of the country will see another Arctic blast later in the month with more snow

Politics

32 hours ago Sam Moore, who sang ‘Soul Man’ in Sam & Dave duo, dies at 89 due to surgery complications

Sam Moore, the surviving half and higher voice of the 1960s duo Sam & Dave that was known for such definitive hits of the era as “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin,’” has died

Events

33 hours ago UK’s only safer drug consumption facility opening in Scotland is win for society

"Getting addiction off the streets and alleyways – and one step closer to treatment – is a win for all of society."

Events

36 hours ago Violated all over again and haunted by the paedophiles who raped us: How the evil Rochdale Nine have been handed a fortune in legal aid so that a decade on only ONE has been deported

Few people outside the town of Rochdale would recognise Abdul Rauf. But for those in the know in this Greater Manchester town, the sight of the 55-year-old paedophile is an utter outrage.

Events