4 d. ago ‘These guys are idiots’: Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black call out government’s Harvey Milk erasure

Team behind Oscar-winning biopic of the groundbreaking gay politician hits back at decision to remove his nameSean Penn, the Oscar-winning actor of the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk and Milk writer Dustin Lance Black have spoken out against US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to remove the gay rights icon’s name from a navy ship.“This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,” Black told the Hollywood Reporter in a phone call on Wednesday. “It’s meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It’s divide and conquer.” Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Who is Bryana 'Bana' Bongolan? Fashion designer who claims Diddy dangled her over 17th

Bryana Bongolan sued Sean Combs for $10 million last year, accusing him of sexual battery and physical abuse. She alleged he groped her and dangled her over the edge of a 17th-story balcony.

Culture

5 d. ago MI5 apologises unreservedly to High Court for ‘failings and errors’

Legal proceedings were related to an alleged source who was accused of abusing two women.

Events

5 d. ago Florida sandwich shop staffer helps free kidnapped domestic violence victim

Jersey Mike’s employee reportedly called county sheriff’s office after finding note in store bathroom that read ‘HELP’A Navarre, Florida, sandwich shop employee reportedly helped authorities save a domestic violence victim who had allegedly been kidnapped by her abusive, pro-wrestler boyfriend after the worker recently found a note in a store bathroom that read “HELP!”At the center of the incident is Eleanor Coffee, who was at her job making sandwiches for a shop belonging to the Jersey Mike’s chain when she noticed a “little piece of crumpled up paper” that had been discarded next to one of the business’s toilet paper dispensers, as she put it to the local news station WEAR-TV. Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago Baltimore schools sued for failing to protect students from a predatory teacher

Three women are suing Baltimore’s public school system, alleging they were sexually abused by a special education teacher decades ago

Society

8 d. ago Revealed: Vile train passenger who threatened women saying 'I'll kill you' is former teen football star about to become father for first time

Electrician Elijah Chilekwa, 27, was filmed allegedly shouting abuse at the women, after they reportedly declined to say who they found most attractive out of himself and two friends.

Events

1 week ago Diddy's former assistant sobs in court over alleged rape and forced sleep deprivation

A former personal assistant to Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs testified in his racketeering and sex trafficking federal trial about alleged sexual abuse and that she wouldn't be allowed to sleep for days

Events

1 week ago Women mount desperate escape bids from Saudi Arabia 'secret rehabilitation prisons'

Women without prospect of leaving have mounted desperate bids to escape from Dar al-Reaya 'care homes' after allegedly being subject to abusive 'hell' conditions

Events

1 week ago Pastor and his wife on the run from sex abuse allegations nabbed weeks later at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry

The child sex abuse case involved the couple’s biological and adoptive children

Events

2 w. ago ‘People raised hell’: why shouldn’t Scarlett Johansson and James Franco play queer characters?

If big names can get films telling fascinating queer stories green-lit, does their own sexuality really matter? In this extract from his new book, Ryan Gilbey takes a fresh look at the ‘queerbaiting’ conundrumJustin Kelly and I first met in 2008 when I was sent to Los Angeles to interview Gus Van Sant. I breezed into the screening room where Van Sant was viewing a rough cut of his film Milk, and promptly tripped over the film-maker’s Australian shepherd Milo, who was snoozing in the dark. Kelly was minding the dog that morning, so in some small but unshakable way I will always blame him for my spectacular stumble.Kelly was the editorial assistant on Milk, which starred Sean Penn as the assassinated San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, and James Franco as his lover. Kelly then went on to direct Franco on two occasions as gay characters based on real people: activist Michael Glatze, who renounces his former life after finding religion in I Am Michael; and the escort, porn producer an...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom

Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald TrumpAlan Alda never expected this. The 89-year-old is back topping the charts with an update of his film The Four Seasons. In 1981, Alda wrote, directed and starred in the movie about three inseparable couples who holiday together every quarter until divorce, envy and angst intervene.Now the film has been turned into a TV series by Tina Fey, with Alda as a producer and, at the time of writing, it is the fourth most watched show on Netflix. “It’s really interesting to have my work appeal to a new generation of very smart writers,” he tells me on a video call from New York. What gave him even more pleasure was watching a screening of the original movie a couple of weeks ago. “The people were laughing at the same things they were...

Politics

2 w. ago Famous men’s toxic fandoms have become a tool for punishing women | Tayo Bero

From DDG to Tory Lanez, a male celebrity is accused of abuse – and his supporters reverse the roles of victim and offenderThere’s a new formula for punishing women who speak out about abuse by high-profile figures, and it usually goes like this: woman alleges abuse, woman seeks recourse through the justice system, woman’s accusation is made public – and then a tidal wave of fans of her abuser come together to help deny the abuse, attack her credibility and reverse the roles of victim and offender.If this sounds familiar it’s because Darvo – the “deny, attack, reversevictim and offender” method of manipulating abuse victims – has existed for forever. But social media has given it a whole new dimension, and powerful people now have an army of rabid fans ready to do that work for them. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Sentimental Value review – Stellan Skarsgård is an egomaniac director in act of ancestor worship

Cannes film festivalJoachim Trier’s entertaining drama sees Norwegian auteur-on-the-slide Skarsgård putting his showbiz family through the wringer in the service of his fading careerHere is an exuberant, garrulous, self-aware picture about an ageing and egomaniac film director and his two grownup daughters; it comes from Norwegian film-maker Joachim Trier, who gave Cannes the marvellous romantic drama The Worst Person in the World in 2021, starring the award-winning Renate Reinsve, who stars in this one as well. The film cycles through a range of moods and ideas, and finally delivers a fair bit of that sentimentality from the title; it’s a movie of daddy issues and cinematic adventures in the manner of Fellini and Bergman, with a gag about overhearing a therapist’s session through the heating pipes, pinched from Woody Allen’s Another Woman.Stellan Skarsgård plays preening auteur Gustav Borg, whose career is on the slide; many years ago he left his wife, Sissel, a psychotherapist, an...

Politics

2 w. ago A Private Life review – Jodie Foster is a sleuthing shrink in French

Cannes film festivalFoster plays a psychoanalyst who suspects her client may not have killed herself, and sets out to investigate with ex-husband Daniel AuteuilRebecca Zlotowski serves up a genial, preposterous psychological mystery caper: the tale of an American psychoanalyst in Paris, watchably played by Jodie Foster in elegant French, who suspects that a patient who reportedly committed suicide was actually murdered. Zlotowski is perhaps channelling Hitchcock or De Palma, or even late-period Woody Allen – or maybe Zlotowski has, like so many of us, fallen under the comedy spell of Only Murders in the Building on TV and fancied the idea of bringing its vibe to Paris and transforming the mood – slightly – into something more serious.Foster is classy shrink Lilian Steiner, stunned at the news that her client Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira) has taken her own life. She is also furiously confronted by Paula’s grieving widower Simon (Mathieu Amalric), who believes she bears some resp...

Events

2 w. ago Film festival to premiere clergy sex abuse documentary partly based on Guardian reporting

God As My Witness details priest’s relationship with teen who later killed himself and other abuse allegationsA new documentary examining the Catholic clergy molestation scandal in New Orleans – based in part on journalism by the Guardian and its local reporting partner WWL Louisiana – is making its world premiere at London’s Raindance film festival in June.God As My Witness is also nominated for best feature-length documentary at the major film festival’s 33rd edition, according to the movie’s director, Lindsay Quinn Pitre. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Outrage as Kevin Spacey receives Lifetime Achievement Award in Cannes just months after fresh sexual abuse allegations

Kevin Spacey will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award today at Cannes for his 'impact on cinema in the arts', two years after he was cleared of sexual assault on four men.

Events

2 w. ago Gran Canaria centre for unaccompanied migrant children closed over abuse allegations

Court asks police to raid centre on outskirts of Las Palmas after ‘extensive evidence and testimony’ of alleged crimesA court in the Canary Islands has ordered the closure of a centre for unaccompanied migrant children, citing allegations that include physical abuse, hate crimes and threats.Police vehicles pulled up to the centre on the outskirts of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria on Monday, entering the facility where 43 children were being housed. A court on the island – the first in Spain to specialise in violence against children and adolescents – said it had asked police to carry out the raid “in light of the extensive evidence and testimony” of alleged crimes taking place in the centre. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Gran Canaria migrant centre closed after allegations of child abuse

Court asks police to raid centre on outskirts of Las Palmas after ‘extensive evidence and testimony’ of alleged crimesA court in the Canary Islands has ordered the closure of a centre for unaccompanied migrant children, citing allegations that include physical abuse, hate crimes and threats.Police entered the centre on the outskirts of Las Palmas on Monday where 43 children were being housed. A court on the island – the first in Spain to specialise in violence against children and adolescents – said it had asked police to carry out the raid “in light of the extensive evidence and testimony” of alleged crimes taking place in the centre. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago First week of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: huge media attention and disturbing details of alleged abuse

Journalists, fans of Combs, podcasters and others lined up to get into court, where Cassie testified about alleged rape The high-profile federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs began this week in New York, where the 55-year-old music mogul faces charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution.Combs, who was arrested in September 2024, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Cassie's husband Alex Fine breaks silence on Diddy trial as he shares emotional statement in support of wife

Cassie Ventura's testimony during the trial painted a harrowing picture of her years with Diddy, describing the emotional and physical abuse she allegedly endured.

Politics