Kent schoolgirl tracks down 10,000 namesakes as part of campaign – but non-Kirstys are welcome to donate too

Calling all Kirstys! A schoolgirl from Tunbridge Wells in Kent is seeking people who share her name to help raise money for research into paediatric brain tumours like the one for which she is being treated.

Kirsty Waugh, who turns 12 on Monday, has already persuaded more than 10,000 Kirstys, Kirsties, Kersties and assorted other variants to plot their locations on a map that shows Kirstys can be found everywhere from Colombia to Malaysia, and even at the Rothera research station in Antarctica.

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The artist’s dreamlike paintings, inspired by his childhood home, led to a collaboration with a global pop icon. Now he’s opening a casita in Bruton – what will the locals think?

Angel Otero is on the brink of tears. He’s describing the feeling of being part of fellow Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny’s La Casita – a set the musician used on stage during his 31-show residency on the island last year, a recreation of a typical single-storey home found across Puerto Rico and the wider Latin American diaspora.

“When I was invited, of course, I accepted,” Otero tells me, standing in his temporary studio in Somerset. “Although I tend to shy away from things like that. The replica is a very similar setting to the one I grew up in, and I had multiple feelings when I got there. Of course, there’s the spectacle of being on the stage of a significant artist of our time, who is from my island. But it also transported me into the subject I’ve been working on for so long. It was a sort of validation, seeing people enjoying the culture, people specifically from my kind of upbringing.”

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What’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf playing at with his new policy? Is it about pushing Labour further to the right, or just an attempt to ramp up rage and resentment?

All parties struggle to invest local elections with meaning, because no party can alter the consequences of what is coming up to two decades of austerity. They can promise they’ll work hard for local people, and many of them will, but they can’t change the maths of inadequate funding and soaring social care costs. All they can do is hope to exist in an affluent enough area.

Instead, the results are taken as a popularity contest, which – if things go your way – will hopefully supply enough buoyancy to last into a general election, and, if things don’t, will hopefully evaporate.

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Positions fourth to sixth are separated by goal difference as Hoffenheim rue being out of the Champions League spots

“This is perhaps the most difficult moment of my career.” It was not, it is fair to say, what Andrei Kramaric had expected on a day – and a week – that was going along like a dream. Two days after he had extended his expiring contract for two years at “my second home”, Hoffenheim’s all-time record scorer had dragged them even closer to a surprise return to the Champions League, scoring goals 157 and 158 for the club on a sunny afternoon with the mood of celebration in the air, as they dominated direct rivals Stuttgart. But in the 95th minute, up popped the visitors’ Tiago Tomás out of nowhere to shatter it all. In the race for the top four in the Bundesliga, life comes at you fast.

One could understand Kramaric’s difficulties in absorbing what had just happened. When he left the field in stoppage time to the warm applause of the PreZero Arena Hoffenheim were in fourth position, the (likely) final Champions League spot which they have worked so hard to recover in recent weeks after a big wobble either side of Easter. By the time that the Croatia striker got comfy on the bench his team had seen their lead improbably evaporate, and when he sat down for dinner they were in sixth, following Bayer Leverkusen’s 4-1 demolition of RB Leipzig in the early evening Topspiel.

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Koperdieven blijven zeer actief in de regio. Zo hebben ze vorige week koperen regenpijpen gestolen van de Dorpskerk in Spijkenisse. Ook een scheepswerf in Krimpen aan den IJssel heeft bezoek gehad van inbrekers, al kwamen zij niet ver.

A new campaign to put down phones and pick up classics.

Op de pro-formazitting werd meer duidelijk over de geestelijke gesteldheid van de 33-jarige man bij wie een bijl was aangetroffen met de naam Alexia erop. Hij verklaarde zich voor te bereiden op een survivaltocht met de prinses.

Fumi0770 has added a photo to the pool:

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