4 d. ago Blackawton pupils represent school as ambassadors at exclusive national event

Blackawton pupils represent school as ambassadors at exclusive national event  South Hams Gazette

Politics

9 d. ago Hallow Road review – Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys race to rescue daughter in cracking thriller

Shot almost entirely inside their car, Pike and Rhys play a splintering couple trying to save their terrified teenagerHow encouraging that whatever state our film industry is considered to be in, it can still find space for a crackingly good script from a supersmart, disciplined first-timer who’s clearly been working on it for a while, planing down the edges and trimming away the fat through successive drafts. Hallow Road is the kind of property that often emerges after a spell on Hollywood’s “Black List” of much admired but as yet unproduced screenplays. It is a gripping, real-time suspense thriller with a twist of the macabre, a film about family guilt and the return of the repressed, written by National Film and Television School graduate William Gillies, a scary-movie enthusiast who here makes his feature script debut. British-Iranian film-maker Babak Anvari directs and Matthew Rhys and Rosamund Pike give forthright, excellent performances as the two leads.Rhys plays Frank, a st...

Events

2 w. ago Manx Liberty’s wildcards deliver in style to regain British team chess crown

The Isle of Man team enlisted two young English stars to help regain the 4NCL title that they won in 2022 and 2023The Four Nations Chess League (4NCL) is a bedrock of British chess. Staged over 11 rounds and five weekends from October to May at ­Midlands hotels, with teams of eight in the top division and six in divisions two to four, it attracts players from club level to grandmaster, many of whom do not compete in any other national event. Its organisation, by the ­English Chess Federation chief executive, Mike Truran, and a ­hardworking team of arbiters, is consistently excellent.As expected, the 2024-25 season ended last Monday with a close 11th round match between the favourites and defending champions, Wood Green, and the winners for the two previous years, Manx Liberty. The outcome was a ­rarity. All eight games were drawn for a 4-4 scoreline, although most were hard fought and Manx missed a winning endgame chance. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Forever review – an absolutely adorable TV take on Judy Blume’s banned teen sex classic

The 1975 novel might be barred from US schools and libraries, but it gets a hugely important telling here. It’s powerful, sweet – and with a cast as excellent as Heartstopper’sA couple of years ago, Judy Blume noted that book banning was not only undergoing a resurgence in the US, but was at that point “much worse” than she had noticed during the 1980s. Blume is one to know: her 1975 novel Forever..., about teenage sex and desire, continues to be banned by school districts and libraries, as repression and censorship gallop on at a pace. This Netflix adaptation of Blume’s novel, which loses the ellipsis, is not only timely but important: through it, the story continues to be told, even if it is in a different medium.This eight-part series, created by Girlfriends showrunner Mara Brock Akil, is sensitive and winningly sweet, while still managing to maintain its defiance and bite. It doesn’t so much update its source material as treat the novel as loose inspiration: details are shuffled...

Events

3 w. ago I witnessed US cruelty as a Guantánamo lawyer. Trump’s deportations are disturbingly familiar | Mark Denbeaux

The government’s claims against detainees were paper-thin and the process riddled with errors. Now history is repeatingGuantánamo is a horror Americans have tried to forget. But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deportation regime resembles so many of Guantánamo’s evils that it compels comparison. That comparison reveals significant differences but frightening similarities.On 11 January 2002, the detention facility opened. The first detainees, in orange jumpsuits, hobbled along in a parade to show the press the success of the government in this battle of the “war on terror”.The detainee admits he was a cook’s assistant for Taliban forces in Narim, Afghanistan under the command of Haji Mullah Baki.Mark Denbeaux is professor emeritus at Seton Hall Law School and for 18 years represented four detainees held in Guantánamo who had endured torture by the CIA Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago First PGA Fourball Championship to be held in Scotland for 36 years

Strathmore Golf Centre, set in the Vale of Strathmore and one of Perthshire and Tayside’s best known golf courses, is celebrating the news that it is to host its first ever UK wide National PGA event.

Politics

3 w. ago Trump golf club to host speaker who markets bleach as health treatment

Andreas Kalcker, prominent peddler of chlorine dioxide remedy, to appear at ‘Truth Seekers Conference’ in MiamiDonald Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference”, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Trump golf club to host speaker who claims bleach can cure cancer and Covid

Andreas Kalcker, prominent peddler of chlorine dioxide remedy, to appear at ‘Truth Seekers Conference’ in MiamiDonald Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference”, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward. Continue reading...

Politics