5 h. ago Multiple 999 calls about two people drowning in the sea near Blackpool's Central Pier

It followed social media reports of 'multiple fatalities' at the seaside over the weekend

Events

8 h. ago Rylan Clark calls for more stories about transgender people amid ‘wave of hate’

The BBC Radio 2 presenter spoke about the adversities faced by LGBT+ people.

Politics

14 h. ago I've lived in France for years and explored every corner of the country. This is why it's time to ditch overrated Paris... and the incredible places you should visit instead

There's a psychological reason why you shouldn't just visit Paris. Really. The sense of disappointment that people often get from visiting the French capital is called Paris Syndrome.

Politics

17 h. ago Alicia Vikander calls The Danish Girl ‘extremely dated’ for portrayal of trans people

Movie was considered controversial at the time due to its portrayal of trans people and for Redmayne’s casting as lead

Politics

31 h. ago World’s best ready to sprinkle stardust on US Open mixed doubles | Tumaini Carayol

A revamped competition with the top singles players and held the week before the main tournament has caught attention at Flushing MeadowsA few hours after Taylor Fritz’s third-round match at the Cincinnati Open, the theme of his post-match press conference shifted from his tough victory against Lorenzo Sonego to the looming US Open mixed doubles tournament. The first question posed to him on this subject was carefully prefaced with the acknowledgment that mixed doubles was probably not his priority in the middle of one of the biggest tournaments in the world. As a grin spread across his face, Fritz quickly interjected: “It is a priority,” he said.Fritz had been asked whether he had any sympathy for the frustrated doubles specialists who had been brushed aside to make room for the transformation of this event. From his perspective, the right players were in the draw: “I’ve seen a lot of people calling it like an exhibition, or it doesn’t count. I personally think this is the stronges...

Politics

33 h. ago East Kilbride Labour leader rallies town to ‘win our future back’ ahead of Holyrood election 

Joe Fagan said Scottish politics was not working for the Scottish people and called for new ideas to make East Kilbride ‘new’ again.

Politics

36 h. ago 'I have to ration water and have stopped having baths due to sky

New research has revealed the day to day impact that soaring water bills are having on older people with low incomes as a charity calls for urgent action

Politics

41 h. ago Tragedy as British father, 47, drowns in 'accident at sea' while on holiday with his son in Turkey

He is said to have entered the sea before he was later found motionless in the water off the coast of Turnuc, near Marmaris, on July 31.

Events

62 h. ago Government told to add £350 a week to pension and cut retirement age to 60

Thousands of people are backing a call to increase the state pension and change the qualifying age

Economics

62 h. ago ‘I’ve been stupid and I miss you’: the family members who buried the hatchet after years of silence

Brothers Bruce and Scott hadn’t spoken for 15 years when finally one made the call that would reunite them. How do people recover from decades-long rifts?“What happened?” Scott, 82, asked Bruce, 78, when his younger brother picked up the phone and called him after a 15-year estrangement. “I grew up,” Bruce said. “I’ve been stupid and I really miss you.” The brothers had missed a decade and a half of each other’s birthdays, milestones and memories made, but here they were, talking again as though no time had passed.A quarter of the adult population describe themselves as estranged from a relative; 10% from a parent and 8% from a sibling, according to research by Karl Pillemer, professor of human development at Cornell University and author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. But when decades pass and rifts remain unhealed, what drives family members such as Scott and Bruce – or, rather more famously, the Gallagher brothers – to repair their ruptured relationships...

Politics

3 d. ago Firefighters called to over 40 obese people a week after it was revealed ambulance service had to spend £30million on specialist transport

The shocking reality of the UK's obesity crisis has been laid bare by Home Office data on the number of firefighter callouts for helping members of the public who are 'overweight or plus size'.

Economics

4 d. ago People speak out over calls to implement 'maximum driving age' in UK

Experts have suggested there should be a 'maximum driving age'

Politics

4 d. ago New calls to exempt people from paying National Insurance Contributions after 35 years

A new online petition is urging the UK Government to change the current policy on National Insurance deductions.

Politics

4 d. ago Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser review – how did television ever sink so low?

Cruelty. Contestants who have abuse screamed in their face. Cash prizes. This documentary about a horrific 00s weight-loss reality TV series in the US makes for deeply troubling watchingThe mid-2000s were a peculiar time in television. After the dubious 90s innovations of Jerry Springer in the US were followed by the UK launch of Big Brother, it was clear that using the travails of so-called ordinary people as fuel for small-screen entertainment was an idea with legs. There was a mini goldrush of sorts as programme makers realised that conflict, extremity and dysfunction would always sell – and that any human-interest subject could be shoehorned into some version of reality TV.In Britain, ITV’s The Jeremy Kyle Show began casting its malign spell in 2005. In the US, something similarly queasy (and enduring) had arrived a year earlier in the shape of NBC’s weight loss bootcamp-meets-bearpit, The Biggest Loser, which took contestants living with obesity then belittled them with humilia...

Culture

5 d. ago Donald Trump lashes out at people calling him a dictator then defends rewriting history

Donald Trump hit back at people calling him a dictator over his unprecedented takeover of police in Washington DC - before defending his plan to force museums to present history to align with his views

Politics

6 d. ago Tory police chief faces backlash over telling public to stop shoplifters

Thames Valley commissioner’s remarks called ‘irresponsible’ by MP after he branded people who do not do anything in face of thieves as ‘part of the problem’ amid record high levels of shoplifting

Events

8 d. ago Eight people killed in barrage of gunfire on Ecuador nightclub

Police found 800 cartridge cases at the scene, where gunmen had arrived in two pickup trucks and opened fireEight people have been killed and two others wounded when a group of gunmen unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a crowd outside a nightclub in a town in south-western Ecuador.Law enforcement arrived on the scene following an emergency call alerting them to a shooting, and found “several people wounded and seven bodies”, said Javier Chango, the police colonel, at a press conference on Sunday, adding that an eighth person died in the hospital. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Phillipson vows to tackle ‘thorny’ challenge facing white working

The Education Secretary has called it is a ‘national disgrace’ that so many young people do not get what they need to progress after leaving school.

Events

1 week ago Mare’s Nest review – an opaque, challenging reflection on the end of the world

Locarno film festivalBen Rivers’s cine-poem, based on Don DeLillo’s climate crisis play The Word for Snow, follows a child’s strange encounters as she wanders in a postapocalyptic world devoid of adultsEnglish experimentalist Ben Rivers offers up another challenging, intriguing cine-poem, this time on the nature of existence and the end of the world. It is opaque but with flashes of strange brilliance, an adaptation of The Word for Snow, a one-act stage play by Don DeLillo from 2007 that reflected on the climate crisis.A child called Moon (Moon Guo Barker) wanders around a strange world, entirely peopled by other children, except for one eerie monochrome sequence in which Moon sees adult figures in some kind of underground tunnel, frozen in attitudes of dismay similar to the citizenry of Pompeii. In the course of her travels, bookended by clambering out of a crashed car and finally driving happily off, Moon has dreamlike encounters with these children who speak with the tongues of a...

Politics

1 week ago Police called to report of 'large fight' at bus station in Welsh town

Officers were called to an incident involving a large group of people in Porth town centre on Wednesday evening

Events