68 m. ago How Hideo Kojima created yet another weird, wonderful world in Death Stranding 2

In Kojima’s latest epic, the Australian outback becomes a shifting, spectral landscape that you can get lost inAs a teenager in the late 1980s, I became obsessed with Australian new wave cinema, thanks partly to the Mad Max trilogy, and partly to an English teacher at my high school, who rolled out the TV trolley one afternoon and showed us Nicolas Roeg’s masterpiece Walkabout. We were mesmerised. Forty years later, I am playing Death Stranding 2, Hideo Kojima’s sprawling apocalyptic adventure, and there are times I feel as if I’m back in that classroom. Most of the game takes place in a ruined Australia, the cities gone, the landscape as stark, beautiful and foreboding as it was in Roeg’s film.I’ve been playing for 45 hours and have barely made an impact on the story. Instead, I have wandered the wilderness, delivering packages to the game’s isolated communities. The game is set after a catastrophic event has decimated humanity and scarred the landscape with supernatural explosions...

Events

94 m. ago First Briton killed by cyber attack on NHS computers: Hack led to lethal delay in test results

A patient died after a cyber attack caused dangerously long waits for blood test results, an NHS harm review has found.

Events

1 hour ago Royal Ascot jockey banned and given significant fine after winning biggest race of his life

Gary Carroll was recently hit with a ban and fine by the British Horseracing Authority's Whip Review Committee after his win on Cercene in the Coronation Stakes

Events

2 h. ago Hozo Neoruler Go review: Laser ruler brings digital precision for £50

A digital ruler that’s pocket-sized, laser-accurate and app-connected? The Hozo Neoruler Go is the future of measuring tools and it’s on sale on Amazon right now

Economics

2 h. ago Highway Code guidance on 'zip merging' in queues and drivers who try to stop it

Many drivers probably think of it as queue jumping - the Highway Code has guidance on the rules around merging in queues

Transport

3 h. ago Wrexham given clear warning as star loved by Ryan Reynolds is shown the door

A former Wrexham manager has told club officials they could live to regret a key decision made during the summer transfer window following a notable departure from the Racecourse

Events

3 h. ago Glastonbury goers given strict guidelines to make the most out of jampacked weekend

With just days before Glastonbury's weekend arrives, here is a list of tips to guarantee you are 'maxxing' out on all the festival has to offer, including ways to land the perfect viewing spot

Politics

3 h. ago Arise, Sir Gareth! Former England boss Southgate receives knighthood from Prince William at Windsor Castle for services to football after guiding Three Lions to TWO Euros finals

Gareth Southgate becomes the fourth England manager to be knighted, following Sir Walter Winterbottom, Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson in receiving the top honour.

Politics

4 h. ago Top experts flag 2 deadly risks of Mounjaro that EVERYONE must watch out for

Experts have issued GPs with crucial guidance on weight loss jabs to avoid deadly complications, as the injections are offered to millions more Britons on the NHS.

Events

4 h. ago Wrexham warned they'll regret transfer call on Ryan Reynolds' favourite player

Wrexham have been advised they may regret loaning Paul Mullin to Wigan Athletic after the striker was backed to rediscover his form by a former Wales international

Events

4 h. ago Duux Whisper Flex 2: Is this the ultimate smart fan for heatwave relief?

This fan is a heatwave saviour

Politics

4 h. ago Best cloud storage platforms that make backing up your data a doddle

We’ve found the solutions that will give you peace of mind when it comes to precious data

Politics

5 h. ago Clueless review – Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy are class acts in 90s Jane Austen parallel

Amy Heckerling’s high school romcoming-of-age classic, composed entirely of quotable funny lines, remains a sophisticated pleasure 30 years onThirty years ago, the world was swooning over Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice adaptation but all the time, the actual Jane Austen screen sensation that year was happening elsewhere in plain sight. Amy Heckerling’s high school romcoming-of-age masterpiece, inspired by Austen’s Emma, is now on re-release for its 30th anniversary and more than ever it feels like a complete joy, a deliciously movie-literate (and literate-literate) classic, with references to Stanley Kubrick, Oscar Wilde and William Burroughs to go with the Austen parallel.Clueless is something to compare with Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story – and Alicia Silverstone’s final, tearful scene matches, and even outclasses, Julia Roberts’ speech in Notting Hill about being just a girl standing in front of a boy. Like Withnail and I, it’s a film ...

Politics

5 h. ago BBC Breakfast staff defend 'overwhelmingly loved' boss under fire from Naga Munchetty

It comes after it was revealed last week that editor Richard Frediani has reportedly taken an extended period of leave, after an internal review of bullying and misconduct allegations.

Events

5 h. ago This Bitter Earth at Soho Theatre review: Billy Porter makes an assured directing debut

This tale of an interracial couple in America is a fresh and illuminating take on recent social and political history that’s already being rewritten elsewhere

Politics

6 h. ago I’m a queer Palestinian. Stop using my identity as cover for the destruction of Gaza | Jad Salfiti

Rightwingers in Israel and the US claim they are defending LGBTQ+ rights while Gaza’s people are killed. Don’t dare do this in our namePride has never been apolitical, but in recent years, particularly after the Israeli occupation’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023, the coalition of queer rights in the west has felt increasingly fractured.In Berlin, the city I call home, Pride events have splintered along political lines as Palestine has been a recurring point of contention. According to organisers of Internationalist Queer Pride Berlin (IQP Berlin), a split between two major alternative Pride events followed an incident in which the initial organisers called police to the event after participants expressed solidarity by chanting “free Palestine”. Meanwhile, at Berlin’s official Pride parade, attenders have previously waved rainbow and Israeli flags as they marched through Berlin alongside an Israeli embassy float.Jad Salfiti is a British-Palestinian video producer a...

Politics

6 h. ago Like its demigod hero, Disney’s Hercules musical loses its divine status in clumsy hands

This show is lit up by sinuous harmonies and heart-melting ballads, but the warmth evaporates when the music stops

Politics

7 h. ago It Used to Be Witches by Ryan Gilbey review – an idiosyncratic guide to queer cinema

This engaging and experimental book explores the complex politics of LGBTQ+ representation in filmFor the British film critic Ryan Gilbey, “cinema and sexuality have always been as closely intertwined [ ] as the stripes on a barbershop pole”. His new book is a bricolage of memoir, criticism and interviews with film-makers that explores the personal and political dimensions of this coupling. It opens with the author in Venice, preparing to give a lecture on cinema; writing in the third person, Gilbey describes himself as the “Gustav von Aschenbach of easyJet”, a reference to the ageing, lustful composer from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (played by a moustachioed Dirk Bogarde in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film adaptation). Gilbey identifies with Aschenbach only because he remembers how his own once-hidden sexuality devitalised him: the closet “render[ed] him elderly before he had so much as touched puberty”. He employs the third person off and on throughout the book....

Politics

9 h. ago The Original by Nell Stevens review – queering the Victorians

This flamboyant tale of fakers and forgery, straddling the turn of the 20th century, is a smart and witty investigation into love and authenticityWe become ourselves by copying others, whether dutifully or audaciously, in acts of homage or appropriation. What is education if not a prolonged process of copying, and isn’t the same true, Nell Stevens asks in her latest novel, of falling in love? Suddenly besotted with another young woman, her protagonist Grace begins to wear her scarf at the side of the neck as her lover does, and to feel “clearer and more deliberate and more like myself” as she does so. “When we fall in love with a person, we fall in love with the copy of them, inexpertly done, that we carry around with us whenever they aren’t there.”At its heart The Original has two strands of copying: both are preoccupations of the late-Victorian era the book is set in. There are the pictures made by Grace when she’s brought, penniless, to her uncle’s house aged 10 after her pa...

Politics

9 h. ago Chicken Town review – endearingly daft Fenland crime caper has a shedful of charm

Sparky performances lift this British crime comedy about a pair of young drug dealers who forge an unlikely alliance with a retired busybodyThere are echoes of Shane Meadows and the Coen brothers in this cheerful crime comedy set in the Fens in eastern England. It’s endearingly daft and unexpectedly charming for a film about small-town drug dealers full of knob jokes – and contains no actual violence from criminals who are more crap than nasty. There are some sparky performances from the young cast, and it manages to pull off natural, easygoing laughs without the cringe that often seeps into British comedies.Ethaniel Davy is brilliant as Jayce, who has just been released from 10 months in a young offenders’ institution – wrongly convicted for crashing a stolen car. Now that he’s out, he wants answers. What everyone except Jayce knows is that it was his best mate Lee (Ramy Ben Fredj, also terrific) behind the wheel of the car. Lee is the heir to a battery-chicken farming empire with ...

Events