42 h. ago The Irish language is a joy not a burden: in what other tongue is a penis a wild carrot? | Una Mullally

Record numbers of pupils are seeking opt-outs from compulsory learning. This is misguided – Irish is a portal to a world of imaginationAmid a boom in Irish culture across music, literature, film and fashion, the Irish language – Gaeilge – is also experiencing a revival. Once the majority’s native tongue, it was assailed and diminished as a daily, working, spoken language under British colonialism and became largely confined to rural west coast districts for much of the 20th century, kept alive by generations of families. But over recent decades the number of schools teaching the national curriculum exclusively through Irish has risen significantly, from fewer than 20 in the 1970s, to more than 200 today. The 2022 census showed a 6% increase in the number of people able to speak Irish compared with 2016. Irish is a core subject on the curriculum and compulsory in all schools.Yet in the academic year of 2024-25, a record number of pupils – 14% of the post-primary school population – w...

Politics

3 d. ago Shocking red: behind the scenes on classic horror Don’t Look Now – in pictures

Released in 1973, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now is regularly acclaimed as a high point of British cinema, with its macabre plotline, atmospheric setting and brilliantly original cinematography and editing. A new book, Don’t Look Now and Then, collects hundreds of images from the film’s production, many of them previously unseen, as well as archive interviews with Roeg and and the film’s stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie• Don’t Look Now and Then by Justin John Doherty is published on 9 October and is available at DontLookNowBook.com Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Putin ‘in his heart of hearts’ knows he cannot win in Ukraine, US special envoy says – Europe live

Keith Kellogg tells Warsaw Security Forum that war in Ukraine is ‘unwinnable’ for PutinIf you are keen to understand the dynamics between the US and Belarus a bit better (10:08), here’s a brilliant story from our own Pjotr Sauer, who recently visited Minsk.Since Trump took office, Lukashenko, an authoritarian strongman who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has been edging out of the diplomatic freeze, cautiously probing for space beyond Moscow, which sees Belarus as both its closest ally and a vital buffer.Sensing a political opening with the new Trump administration, Lukashenko has regularly met US officials and even held a call with the US president, who has floated the idea of a direct meeting. Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago My boobs ballooned until I was spilling out my bra – I never imagined the cause was lurking in my brain

WHEN Lauren Ayres’ boobs ballooned three sizes in just a few weeks, she didn’t think much of it. "I got [my breasts] measured back in January and I bought all new bras and literally I was falling out of them," the 28-year-old communications specialist, said. "I didn't fit and it was so baffling." Lauren jumped...

Politics

9 d. ago Perv pensioner caught printing pornographic pics of young men at Boots photo kiosk is jailed

A NORTH Yorkshire man with a decades long history of sex offences has been jailed after being caught printing porn at Boots. It was a staff member at the Guisborough Boots who found the 71-year-old printing the pornographic images of young men and alerted police. A sexual harm prevention order bans Robin Jackson from accessing pornographic...

Events

2 w. ago Trump is no 'strongman' when it comes to Russia or Israel. If other democracies don’t step up, anarchy awaits | Simon Tisdall

Putin and Netanyahu are creating chaos in the vacuum left by a weak US president. But there are still ways to foil themIt is too easy to blame Donald Trump for everything that goes wrong in the world. The ability of any US president to fundamentally change or control the behaviour of other major powers is frequently overestimated. Yet by posing as a sort of uncrowned global monarch and grand arbiter of war and peace, Trump perpetuates fantasies of US hegemony, omnipotence and divine right. Intoxicated by such ego-inflating delusions, he pledged before taking office to swiftly end the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Perhaps, in his vanity and hubris, he truly believed he could.Eight months on, the exact opposite is happening. Both crises are expanding and escalating. The bubble has burst, his bluff has been called, the emperor has no clothes – and there is no denying that Trump, by alternately appeasing, excusing and encouraging the two foremost villains of these twin tragedies, is great...

Politics

3 w. ago House committee releases image of apparent Trump birthday note and entire Epstein album

Image mirrors report of letter, turned over by estate lawyers after subpoena and part of ‘infamous “Birthday Book”’US politics live – latest updatesHouse Democrats on Monday released an image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump, the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.The letter, which was turned over by lawyers for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena from the House oversight committee, was included in a set of notes sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Trump’s strongman image got boos at the US Open, and perhaps that was the point | Andrew Lawrence

The president’s appearance at the men’s final was met with pushback. But his visit was always about distraction, even if it exposed his flawsIt was just the authoritarian image Donald Trump hoped to project at the US Open: the president himself, looming from Arthur Ashe Stadium’s giant screens like Chairman Mao at Tiananmen Gate, as he stood at attention for the national anthem. But there was no denying that, while the picture was there, the sound clashed. The burst of cheers that went up for his stiff salute on Sunday was quickly drowned out by a chorus of boos made louder from the Ashe roof being closed for rain – perhaps fitting given that many fans had been left to stand in the wet and endure the long security lines that resulted from his attendance. In that awkward five-second moment, as the Stars and Stripes was unfurled on center court, the president smirked at the negative reaction. It surely rang so familiar.Trump’s presence at the US Open men’s final wasn’t just intended a...

Politics

3 w. ago Scientists reveal exactly what will happen if the Earth continues to spin faster

A new book imagines what the world would be like if Earth spun faster and faster until days just last two hours.

Science

4 w. ago Blur’s Dave Rowntree: ‘People think music was better in the old days, to which I say: bollocks!’

The drummer for the Britpop band on why Oasis aren’t his nemesis, his failed bid to become a UK Labour MP and how he finally conquered mathsGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailYou’ve just put out a coffee table book of photographs of your early years with Blur. I imagine you didn’t have too many expectations at the time. Why had you stopped taking photos by the time the band blew up?I told myself that I was not experiencing life, that I was looking at it through the lens of the camera. But what really happened was, after a few years, things stopped being bright and shiny and new and exciting. It was pretty clear that we were going to have a career, that this wasn’t just a 15-minute Warholian burst of fame. I just moved on to other things.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningNo One You Know: Dave Rowntree’s Early Blur Photos is out now Continue reading...

Politics