27 m. ago Felix Baumgartner’s final social media video posted hours before death in paragliding accident

Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner posed a video of himself meeting a young fan, just hours before he died in a paragliding accident.

Events

36 m. ago The Open 2025: Tee times and second round schedule at Portrush including Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler

McIlroy, playing with Justin Thomas and Tommy Fleetwood, is one of the early starters in Friday’s second round and sits just three shots behind the leaders overnight, with world No 1 Scottie Scheffler, well-placed at three under, set for a late start and finish on Friday alongside Shane Lowry and Collin Morikawa

Politics

44 m. ago Grant Shapps defends use of superinjunction to suppress Afghan data leak

Shapps, defence secretary when the superinjunction was imposed, said its use was ‘entirely justified’ to save livesAfghan nationals: have you arrived in the UK under the ARR?The former defence secretary Grant Shapps has defended the use of an unprecedented superinjunction to suppress a data breach that led to the UK government relocating 15,000 Afghans.The Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) was created in haste after it emerged that personal information about 18,700 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK had been leaked in error by a British defence official in early 2022. Continue reading...

Politics

46 m. ago Remember When by Fiona Phillips review – an unsparing insight into early

The journalist and TV presenter’s memoir of events leading up to her diagnosis, aged just 61, is a moving account of a life slowly unravelling before her and her husband’s eyesIn 2019, the TV presenter and journalist Fiona Phillips booked a last-minute trip to Vietnam with a friend. Nothing unusual there, you might think. But not only did Phillips not invite her husband or children, she didn’t consult them, instead simply informing them that she was leaving the following week. It was an impulsive decision that she hoped would lift her out of a depressive episode that was manifesting in brain fog and anxiety. But for her husband, TV editor Martin Frizell, it was another instance of Phillips behaving oddly, a sign that things “were not all they should be”.Remember When chronicles, with illuminating candour, the changes that culminated in Phillips’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2022, at the age of 61. Billed as a memoir by Phillips herself, owing to her decline during the th...

Politics

47 m. ago AD FEATURE: Enjoy your conservatory all year round with a stunning Sagars365 transformation

This family-run business will swiftly convert your conservatory into a space that's perfect for any season

Politics

76 m. ago Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight review | Jude Roger's folk album of the month

(River Lea)Masters of atmosphere, Ruth Clinton, Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody contrast hauntological synths with robust noise on this playful debutThe latest gorgeous release from the fecund Irish folk scene doesn’t begin with bassy dread in the Lankum mode, but a mood of gentle, haunting psychedelia. Adieu Lovely Erin starts by evoking Broadcast swirling around a maypole; then it’s as if Cocteau Twins had been transported to a traditional music session. Its sweet, high female vocals also evoke the improvisations of sean-nós singing, while simmering, krautrock-like drums build drama.Poor Creature comprises three musicians expert in heightening and managing atmosphere: Landless’s Ruth Clinton, Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada plus live Lankum drummer John Dermody. Their debut album steeps cowboy songs, Irish ballads, bluegrass and other traditional songs in a misty, playful lightness that somehow also carries an eerie power. Bury Me Not is a 19th-century American song about a dying ...

Politics

81 m. ago Diane Abbott’s Labour suspension must be resolved ‘as swiftly as possible’, says minister – UK politics live

Treasury minister James Murray said Abbott’s claim that ‘this Labour leadership wants me out’ was ‘absolutely not the case’Good morning and welcome to our coverage of UK politics. We’re now in recess but we’ll still be bringing you all the news from across the country including continued reaction to the suspension of Diane Abbott.This morning, a minister has denied the veteran MP’s assertion that “it is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out”.That’s absolutely not the case.What’s happened is Diane has made some comments which come on the back of previous comments which she made and for which she apologised some time ago.The details of more than 100 Britons, including spies and special forces personnel, were included in a massive data leak that resulted in thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK.The voting age will be lowered to 16 across the UK by the next general election in a major change of the democratic system.Labour significantly outspent the Conservatives...

Politics

99 m. ago Euro 2025: England route to final after dramatic penalty shootout victory over Sweden

A showdown with Spain is on the cards after Lionesses overcome Sweden in last eight

Events

1 hour ago Man Utd new signing could force summer transfer after firing clear warning at team

Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim is assessing his players in pre-season and has decisions to make at left-back, where he has four players competing for a place

Events

1 hour ago Nagasaki cathedral blesses a bell that replaces one destroyed by the US atomic bomb

Nagasaki cathedral has blessed the final piece to complete its restoration nearly 80 years after being destroyed by the second U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Japan: a reproduction of its lost bell restored by a group of Americans

Events

1 hour ago First tickets to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sell out – a year before its 2026 release

The blockbuster adaptation of Homer’s epic has not finished filming and has no official runtime. But super fans – and scalpers – already have seatsThe first tickets to Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s Odyssey have gone on sale – before he’s even finished filming it and a year before the film is even out, in what is likely the longest pre-sale in cinematic history.The Odyssey, which stars Matt Damon as the cunning Odysseus as he fights his way home after the end of the Trojan war, will be released on 17 July 2026. But on Thursday, Imax released tickets to the first screenings at the 26 Imax cinemas around the world that have the staff and equipment required to project in 1570 format. Continue reading...

Politics

1 hour ago Crypto donations could entirely corrupt British politics. Labour must act quickly | Liam Byrne

We need to know who is funding our parties, but this new frontier is custom-built for hostile actors. The elections bill is a good start – but only thatLiam Byrne is the Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge HillOur party finance rules are riddled with loopholes. Shell companies. Unincorporated associations. Anonymous donations routed through digital campaigns between elections. All legal. All ripe for abuse. And now, a new gateway has opened: cryptocurrency.When someone buys a cryptocurrency their identity is anonymous, but the transaction itself is recorded on the blockchain and is publicly visible. So far we know that this anonymity has allowed cryptocurrencies to be used to fund everything from sanctions evasion to election interference. A recent report from the Centre for Information Resilience revealed that A7A5, a new “digital rouble”, has already been linked to sanctions evasions by Russians. The report also found that Ilan Shor, a fugitive oligarch who has been accused of being in...

Politics

1 hour ago Eight hours, 250 singers and as many bananas as it takes: Tavener’s Veil of the Temple

Who’d be brave enough to programme John Tavener’s choral epic? We talk to the team behind the staging that’s opening this year’s Edinburgh international festival, and veterans of its 2003 premiere remember the challenges and rewardsWhat’s the longest concert you’ve ever been to? Ever found yourself sitting through more encores than you’d bargained for, worrying about your last train? Or mid-symphony becoming desperate to stand up and stretch?What about the longest single piece of music? Opera-goers may or may not sympathise with Rossini’s quip about Wagner’s “good moments but awful quarters of an hour”, but there is no denying the monumental scale of Die Meistersinger, for instance, which runs to about four and a half hours, not including intervals. And then there’s the same composer’s Ring cycle – about 15 hours in total, albeit split across four instalments; as close to a marathon as classical music usually gets. Continue reading...

Politics

1 hour ago Young, educated and knee deep in rubbish: the recyclers cleaning up in Cairo’s Garbage City

Piles of waste line the streets of Manshiyet Nasr, turning it into a no-go zone for many. But a new generation see themselves as agents of change in the fight against plastic pollutionWhen Mina Nedi graduated with a nursing degree last year, his friends and family expected him to start working in one of Egypt’s overstretched hospitals. Instead, the 25-year-old decided to join his father’s recycling business in Manshiyet Nasr, a neighbourhood on Cairo’s eastern outskirts known as Garbage City.Every day, he sorts through thousands of plastic bottles, collected by a team of men who roam the city at night to pick up rubbish, separating them by colour and compressing them into large bundles with the help of a machine, ready to be sold for recycling and reuse.Mina Nedi, 25, has been working as a plastic collector for five years and funded his university education with it Continue reading...

Politics

1 hour ago 2025 World Matchplay prediction & odds: Cool Hand Luke can freeze out Winter Gardens rivals

Follow our darts betting tips for the 2025 edition of the World Matchplay at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens

Politics

1 hour ago Perseid meteor shower 2025: How and when to see 'starting this weekend'

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the brightest and fastest meteor showers of the year, and is set to peak within a month

Politics

2 h. ago 2025 Betfred World Matchplay: Full schedule as Luke Humphries makes defence

World No.1 looking for back-to-back glory in Blackpool

Politics

2 h. ago How to watch The Open 2025: TV channel, live stream and times for second round

McIlroy aiming for second major title of the calendar year

Politics

2 h. ago Jeff Stelling responds to Joey Barton in Lionesses row after ‘monstrosity’ claim

England beat Sweden to reach the semi-finals of Euro 2025 following a late comeback and a farcical penalty shootout in which the Lionesses missed more spot kicks than they scored

Politics

2 h. ago How destruction of Hotel Oloffson is symbol of Haiti’s gang crisis

Once a haven for the world’s rich and famous, the landmark hotel was burned down this month as violence gripped Port-au-PrinceThere was an outpouring of grief in Haiti when the Hotel Oloffson, a cultural and architectural landmark in Port-au-Prince, was set ablaze on the night of 5 July, in what local media described as retaliation by armed gangs after a police operation in its vicinity.For many, its ruins are a stark and sobering symbol of the state of a capital city on the verge of collapse, and a sign that a once vibrant culture may be fading as violent criminal armed groups continue their reign of terror. Continue reading...

Events