2 h. ago Man discovers something is 'eating' his brain days after going water

The man was rushed to intensive care after developing a rare condition that only seven people have survived just days after the had been water-skiing on a lake

Politics

2 h. ago Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Hisaishi review – frothing strings and quacking brass as Studio Ghibli’s composer debuts

Royal Albert Hall, LondonSwitching between podium and piano, Joe Hisaishi’s suite from The Boy and the Heron sparked joy, but Reich’s demanding Desert Music was vibrant and hypnoticOne of the pleasures of the BBC Proms is that they bring some of classical music’s biggest names from around the world to the Royal Albert Hall. But celebrity is always relative – and, for better or worse, most Proms artists don’t also headline stadium gigs.But Japanese composer and conductor Joe Hisaishi does and, at 74, is a Proms debut artist like no other. He came on stage to waves of screaming and phones brandished to capture the moment. Never heard of him? You’re probably not part of the vast fanbase of the “cultural phenomenon” Studio Ghibli. Hisaishi is the John Williams of anime, responsible for the music in global hits from My Neighbour Totoro to The Boy and the Heron. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Ezviz RS20 Max review: a powerful £500 robot vacuum with unique mop tech

The Ezviz RS20 Max sets itself apart with detachable mops, powerful suction, and a built-in camera that doubles as home security.

Economics

2 h. ago The 'godfather of AI' reveals the only way humanity can survive superintelligent AI

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher dubbed the 'Godfather of AI', says there is a 10 to 20 per cent chance that AI wipes out humanity.

Events

3 h. ago Universal deny that head Lucian Grainge was personally involved in Kendrick Lamar attack on Drake

UMG have called for Drake’s motion to include Grainge’s communications on the matter to be denied, calling it ‘so strained’ as to ‘defy credulity’Universal Music Group has denied new allegations made by Drake’s lawyers that its British chair and chief executive Lucian Grainge had a “role in and knowledge of the scheme to defame and harass” the Canadian rapper by peer Kendrick Lamar, and that as such the label should “collect, review and produce” communications by Grainge.Drake is suing UMG – his label Republic’s parent company – over its release of Lamar’s 2024 diss track Not Like Us, which contains the line: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.” The artwork for the global hit single features an image of Drake’s home dotted with icons used to identify the homes of registered sex offenders. Continue reading...

Events

4 h. ago Palestine Action prosecutions should be suspended, say UK rights groups

Campaigners tell attorney general that proceeding with trials before judicial review raises legal and moral questionsUK politics live – latest updatesProtesters arrested for supporting Palestine Action should not be prosecuted until a legal challenge to a ban on the group has been heard, organisations including Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch have told the attorney general for England and Wales.In a letter to Richard Hermer KC, also signed by Friends of the Earth, Global Witness and the Quakers, they say proceeding with charges or trials before the judicial review, which is expected to be heard in November, would raise significant legal and moral questions. Continue reading...

Politics

4 h. ago And Just Like That was a total disaster – and I’m heartbroken

The much-maligned ‘Sex and the City’ sequel series has finally come to an end, with a typically inept episode of unfunny jokes, hateful characters, and baffling plot turns. It was a mortifying last stand for a franchise that many of us once adored, writes Adam White

Events

4 h. ago Trump has privately pondered if Epstein accusers are just ‘Democrats’ trying to make him look bad, report claims

The White House denies that Trump accused Epstein survivors who made media appearances as ‘clearly of a “Democrat” political affiliation’

Politics

5 h. ago Premier League CEO Richard Masters delivers his verdict on promoted clubs’ survival chances

The last two Premier League seasons have seen the three promoted clubs relegated

Events

5 h. ago Two of the UK’s biggest bakeries to combine to make bread giant

The move follows a strategic review of the Allied Bakeries business

Politics

5 h. ago A84 review underway to enhance road safety for crossing school children

Transport Scotland is conducting a review and is consulting with Kincardine-in-Menteith Primary School to look at potential improvements to the A84 past the school, the church hall and bus stops there.

Politics

6 h. ago Benedicte Maurseth: Mirra review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month

(Hubro)Rhythmic repetitions and rustling textures evoke the traditional music and ecological harmony of Maurseth’s native NorwayA hardanger fiddle player from the fjord-and-mountain-filled region of Norway, where the instrument comes from, Benedicte Maurseth explores traditional music, nature and landscape influenced by the idea of ecosophy, a philosophy of ecological harmony. From childhood, she studied under master hardanger fiddler Knut Hamre, exploring the tunes, styles and effects associated with her instrument: its sympathetic strings, funnelled under the fingerboard, are particularly hypnotic, vibrating in response to the notes resonating above, as they do on the sitar and sarangi.A follow-up to Maurseth’s 2022 Nordic music prize-winning Hárr, Mirra is named after an old dialect word describing wild reindeer running together in a circling pattern. Norwegian folk’s rhythmic repetitions feed Maurseth’s intricate compositions (as do the influences of minimalism and Krautrock), b...

Politics

6 h. ago ‘The idea was for a Black James Bond’: the making of 50 Cent: Bulletproof

The game’s launch 20 years ago coincided with the rapper’s meteoric success with his album The Massacre. Here, the team that made the shooter reflect on how it all happened The rapper 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) was inescapable back in 2005. There wasn’t a British classroom without a teenager wearing Jackson’s G-Unit clothing, while his catchy hits Candy Shop and In Da Club dominated the radio. The backstory of this Queens-born New Yorker – how he survived being shot nine times only to become one of the world’s biggest rappers – also made for compelling lore.That year, 50 Cent sold more than a million copies in one week with his sophomore studio album, The Massacre. In a bid to cash in on this superstardom, his label Interscope Records planned a twin strategy: a Hollywood biopic (Get Rich or Die Tryin’) and a licensed video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof – both to be released by November 2005. “I think the general public are going to be blown away by my game,” 50 Cent told the we...

Politics

6 h. ago Richard Masters hopes promoted clubs can compete to survive in Premier League

Leeds, Burnley and Sunderland are tasked with bucking an alarming recent trend.

Politics

6 h. ago Rise Against: Ricochet review – slick shift doesn’t skimp on righteous anger

(Loma Vista)Blood-and-guts emotion with the energy of the punk veterans’ early years meets high-sheen recording craft in a hulking 10th albumRise Against are not the first punk band to embrace the trappings of arena rock, but few of their forerunners can say they moved between those opposing states with the confidence and style displayed here. Having spent two decades retrofitting the breakneck melodic hardcore of their early work with rafter-shaking hooks and gleaming production, the Chicago veterans’ 10th album is a hulking thing, its bombast and righteous anger fed by vocalist Tim McIlrath, who finds the middle ground between Strike Anywhere and Creedence Clearwater Revival more often than you might think possible.Working in tandem with producer Catherine Marks, fresh from Grammy wins for her work on Boygenius’s The Record, and mixer-to-the-stars Alan Moulder, they regularly square the circle between blood-and-guts emotion and high-sheen recording craft. McIlrath’s community-mind...

Politics

7 h. 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

8 h. ago In the Green Heart by Richard Lloyd Parry review – neocolonial jungle fever

An intensely political story of a new father’s escape with his baby through a rainforest during wartimeRichard Lloyd Parry, a longtime foreign correspondent whose experiences of war and regime change are recorded in his remarkable 2005 memoir In the Time of Madness, can be said to know whereof he speaks. Many of that book’s issues, including the psychic damage he incurred from events he witnessed in Indonesia, East Timor and Afghanistan in the 1990s and early 2000s, are reinflected in this, his first novel.Kit and Lara live in a remote village in the deep rainforest. She works for a small, undependably financed NGO. He’s a stay-at-home husband, living for their baby daughter Helen. While Lara presents as impulsive yet practical and barely able to contain her own energy, Kit is dreamy, internalised, exhibiting a calmness that falls easily into dissociation. “This is your life,” she shouts at him shortly before they leave the UK, “a day of your life, and it requires your presence.” He...

Politics

9 h. ago Josh Barrie On the Sauce at All My Gods: Nuclear daiquiris in a temple of darkness

Praise be for this this charming sanctity

Events

9 h. ago Alison Goldfrapp: Flux review – Melody and meaning evaporate in mid

Goldfrapp said in 2023 that she wanted to challenge herself with her solo work, but she seems less edgily present here than she did with her bandmate Will Gregory

Politics

10 h. ago 'Sesame Street' stars Elmo and Abby Cadabby sing and host in their Grand Ole Opry debut

For a 3 1/2-year-old, Elmo sure has sung a lot on “Sesame Street” with some of the best musicians in the world

Politics