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My mom, the cult leader: ‘She told us what to wear, when to pray, how we would have sex. We were prisoners’

Deborah Green was a charismatic woman who established a ‘free love ministry’ in California, claiming to be a vessel for God. She was also a controlling, cruel sadist. Her daughter Sarah talks about her terrifying upbringing – and dramatic escape

Sarah Green realised things weren’t right in the religious community where she was raised when her mother forced three of its members to live in a locked shed. All three were women, disowned by their husbands, and forced to live off scraps of food. Her mother, Deborah Green, said they had been judged by God and this was their punishment. One of the women, an old family friend called Maura, was made to wear a white sackcloth dress and renamed Forsaken. The other two women were renamed Barren and Despised.

Sarah is a strong, striking woman with a keen sense of irony and a joyous cackle of a laugh. But now she’s in tears. “I felt sickened to my gut. Even though I’d been groomed and my mom told me, ‘I’m God’s oracle, so therefore I hear what God wants for everybody, and this is what they have to go through because they’re sinning’, it didn’t make sense to me.” She sniffs back her tears. “Sorry, I’m getting emotional. So when they locked the people in the shed, I’d sneak them food. I just didn’t understand why Maura, who was part of our membership, had kids, all of a sudden was being forced to live like an animal and do the most degrading things. I didn’t understand why.” Sarah is wailing, as if she’s been transported back to the little girl she was at the time. “What had she done? I didn’t see anything, and I grew up around them. So from that moment you lived in fear, because you could be the next person on the chopping block.” Sarah eventually discovered that Maura’s sin was that she had refused to beat her children.

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The Wellington, Margate, Kent: ‘Worth risking a werewolf attack to get to’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

The ever-changing menu is a paean to things that make me happy

The Wellington has been drawing crowds to Margate of late, due to a recent takeover by chef Billy Stock and front-of-house queen Ellie Topham. Stock is formerly of nearby Sète, which I loved very much, and also cooked at London’s The Marksman and St John, which is a pedigree that says: “I like feeding people proper food, not fancy, itsy-bitsy suggestions of food.” So with that, I set off to the south-east Riviera on a day when the weather ranged from hailstones to simply freezing gales.

Much is said about Margate being freshly desirable, hip and charming, but on a freezing day at the tail end of winter, this seaside town certainly tests the prescription of one’s rose-tinted spectacles. None of the down-from-London brigade cries, “Let’s move to Margate!” as icy hail plink-plonks off their nose while they cower in the door of the Turner Contemporary. On days like this, you need a centuries-old pub like the Wellington just off the promenade in the Old Town, to dry off with a stiff negroni and a bowl of French onion soup with beef short ribs. Or maybe a slab of country-style terrine with cornichons and, if you’re driving, one of their very good non-alcoholic shrubs: when we visited, there was a lovely, sharp but not-too-tart rhubarb one on offer.

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A new Austen drama made me wonder: is the fate of bookish young women really so different today? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

The Other Bennett Sister reminded me of my own self-consciousness – and worry that girls still have to play down their cleverness

To be a clever, bookish teenage girl is to spend a certain amount of time standing on the sidelines, feeling invisible to boys. When I was at school, there seemed to be a natural division: you could be smart or pretty, but you could not be both. Of course, there were girls who were indeed both, but they either intentionally dumbed themselves down or spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make themselves beautiful. (Perhaps other schools and other early-2000s teenagehoods were different, but that was the reality of mine.)

The Other Bennet Sister – a new BBC costume adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel telling the story of Mary, the intelligent, bespectacled, painfully shy sister to Pride and Prejudice heroine Lizzy – sent me right back to that awkward age. That’s how vividly it conjures the extreme lack of confidence that can come from being sidelined, whether by one’s peers or, as in Mary’s case, one’s own mother. Watching Ella Bruccoleri’s excellent performance reunited me with those awful feelings of shyness and exclusion, of walking with your head down in the hope that no one notices you. “Why do you walk like that?” I remember a popular, vivacious girl in my year asking me, not unkindly. She couldn’t comprehend what it meant to walk with such a lack of confidence. I wished I could borrow even a pinch of hers.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author of Female, Nude

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The OnlyFans inheritance: how its owner’s death could reshape the porn money-making machine

Leonid Radvinsky’s widow has been left with a crucial role in deciding what happens to the business that made her husband a billionaire

Yekaterina Chudnovsky, online biographies say, is a mother-of-four who “enjoys spending time with her family and teaching them the importance of giving back and helping others”. They add that Ukrainian-born Chudnovsky, known as Katie, finds sanctuary in walks on the beach.

In interviews, Chudnovsky has spoken warmly about her commitment to philanthropy, her dedication to support cancer research and her work as a lawyer for an unnamed global technology firm. Pornography is never mentioned.

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Formula One 2026: Japanese Grand Prix race updates – live

️ Live updates from the race at Suzuka | Email Joey
️ Lights go out at 2pm local/6am GMT/4pm AEDT

Alas, today’s race will be the last time that we’ll be racing for a month; the Championship next scheduled to meet for the Miami GP on the opening weekend of May.

This is because of the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia GPs due to the ongoing stability caused by the war between Israel and the United States and Iran, which, unfortunately, continues.

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Middle East crisis live: Explosions in Tehran as Yemen’s Houthis heighten risks of Iran war

War continues to escalate with Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis confirming a second wave of attacks on Israel since they joined the war on Saturday

Shipping helplines ring with alerts from seafarers trapped amid war

Seafarers’ helplines say they are overwhelmed with messages from crews stuck in the Gulf by the Middle East war, desperately seeking repatriation, compensation and onboard supplies.

In a televised speech, Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said the Iran-backed group had launched a “barrage of cruise missiles and drones” in a second attack on Israel, targeting key military sites. He vowed the Houthis would continue military operations in the coming days until Israel “ceases its attacks and aggression”.

The entry of the Houthis, poses a direct threat to the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, a second major choke point in the supply chain of energy supplies and other trade in and out of the Middle East. With Iran’s near total closure of the strait of Hormuz, a shutdown of the Bab al-Mandab, located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, would amplify the already grave impact of the war on the global economy, and could also reignite a Saudi-Yemen conflict.

The Pentagon is preparing plans for weeks of ground operations in Iran – potentially including raids on Kharg Island and coastal sites near the strait of Hormuz – though President Donald Trump has not yet approved any deployment, the Washington Post is reporting. Any ground operation would stop short of a full-scale invasion, instead involving raids by special operations forces and conventional infantry troops, the Post said, citing unnamed officials.

Exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has told one of the US’s biggest annual gatherings of conservatives that he is ready to lead a new Iranian government and would call on the country’s citizens to rise up when the “right moment arrives”, AP reports. Pahlavi is the son of the shah, a monarch deposed in 1979 when the Islamic theocracy came to power.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to target US universities in the Middle East after saying US-Israeli strikes had deliberately targeted two Iranian universities. “If the US government wants its universities in the region to be free from retaliation... it must condemn the bombing of the universities in an official statement by 12 noon on Monday, March 30, Tehran time,” said the statement published by Iranian media.

Pakistan has said it would host a meeting of Middle Eastern powers on Monday in an effort to find a regional approach to ending the conflict. But the talks, which bring together the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, did not appear to include any of the warring parties, casting further doubt on persistent US claims of diplomatic progress.

Israeli attacks killed three journalists in a targeted strike on their car in southern Lebanon, which the Lebanese president condemned as a “blatant war crime”. The strike killed Ali Shoeib, from Hezbollah-owned al-Manar TV, Fatima Ftouni and her brother and cameraman Mohammed Ftouni from pro-Hezbollah outlet al-Mayadeen.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organisation, called for an end to attacks on medical staff after nine paramedics were ​killed in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

The Israeli military bombarded Tehran with a “wide-scale wave of strikes”, damaging residential areas, civilian infrastructure, and research and educational buildings. The IDF also said it had hit Iran’s headquarters for naval weaponry.

Iran has allowed 20 oil tankers from Pakistan to pass through the strait of Hormuz. Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, said two ships would cross per day. The country has been playing a key mediatory role in the conflict.

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Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

MacOS 26.4 Adds Warnings For ClickFix Attacks to Its Terminal App

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: ClickFix attacks are ramping up. These attacks have users copy and paste a string to something that can execute a command line — like the Windows Run dialog, or a shell prompt.

But MacRumors reports that macOS 26.4 Tahoe (updated earlier this week) introduces a new feature to its Terminal app where it will detect ClickFix attempts and stop them by prompting the user if they really wanted to run those commands.

According to MacRumors, the warning readers "Possible malware, Paste blocked."

"Your Mac has not been harmed. Scammers often encourage pasting text into Terminal to try and harm your Mac or compromise your privacy...."

There is also a "Paste Anyway" option if users still wish to proceed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

14777 DSC_0017 Launceston Market Feb 2015

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14777 DSC_0017 Launceston Market Feb 2015

14778 DSC_0019 Pareidolia in Launceston perhaps

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14778 DSC_0019 Pareidolia in Launceston perhaps

14779 Launceston street art detail 115 heavy crop Lumix

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

14779 Launceston street art detail 115 heavy crop Lumix