A new exhibition in London celebrates the influential hairstylist whose clients include Janelle Monáe and Zadie Smith. She explains her story – and why she’s on a mission to ensure stylists are trained to work with all hair types

When Charlotte Mensah was a young child growing up in Accra, Ghana in the 1970s, she would spend hours watching her aunties having their hair intricately threaded, an ancient African technique where hair is wrapped tightly using yarn or thread. She didn’t know then that she would go on to become one of the most influential hairdressers in the UK. Renowned for championing natural black hair textures in mainstream culture, she has worked as hairstylist to singers Janelle Monáe and Erykah Badu, and the writer Zadie Smith.

According to Smith, in an essay she penned about Mensah’s magic earlier this year: “Charlotte can make a great mane of braids appear where previously there were only split ends and hair loss.”

Victims of those killed in September 11 attacks honored at memorials across the US

President Donald Trump is set to observe today’s 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by attending a ceremony at the Pentagon.

It’s the second year in a row for Trump to mark the day at the Pentagon. The president, who is originally from New York, last attended the ground zero ceremony there in 2024.

The latest adaptation of Culpable trilogy author Mercedes Ron, about a ballet dancer and her security guard, has more holes than plot and chemistry than barely generates a spark

Here is Prime Video’s latest Mercedes Ron adaptation, following the massive ratings success of her Culpable trilogy (My Fault, Your Fault, Our Fault). Drawn Together tells the story of a ballet dancer falling in love with her bodyguard. It’s meant to be darker and sexier than the Culpable movies (which were derived from YA-aimed novels), but has all the erotic charge of leaf mulch. It’s the worst of all worlds – trash minus any froth or fun, trash with pretensions. Fans no doubt will be instantly at home in its glossy world of the ultra-wealthy, all the budget blown on cream-coloured furnishings and jodhpurs.

Ester Expósito is Marfil, a 20-year-old student and ballet dancer from Spain living in New York. One night, she is abducted in Central Park and wakes up two days later in hospital with no memory of what happened. What Marfil doesn’t know is that her billionaire father Alejandro (Pablo Molinero) is an organised crime boss, and he hires bodyguard Sebastián (Hugo Diego Garcia) as 24/7 protection for Marfil. In a film with more holes than plot, this stands out as especially preposterous. No father alive would risk hiring smouldering Sebastián (think Tom Hardy’s hot young Spanish cousin) as security for his daughter.

• Manager wants players to cope with things going wrong

• Other tactics include making dressing room even hotter

Mikel Arteta has revealed that he likes to set players challenges, such as delaying their meals before matches and making the dressing room hotter, to ensure they are fully prepared for any eventuality.

Arsenal’s flight to Italy for their Champions League opener against Napoli this week was delayed for more than five hours, with Arteta forced to cancel his pre-match press conference after the squad arrived in Naples just before 10pm local time. The disruption proved no handicap as they made it 13 successive league-stage victories in Europe, thanks to Martin Ødegaard’s second-half winner.

The president’s chaotic schemes of aggrandizement, from Venezuela to Iran, have no larger rationale

Trumpism is the lowest stage of imperialism. “We’re not going to invade Greenland. We’re going to buy it,” Donald Trump reportedly told the annual black-tie dinner on 1 February of the private Alfalfa Club, an assemblage of prominent Washington figures, a number of whom he had publicly humiliated, and others he was investigating or suing. “It’s never been my intention to make Greenland the 51st state. I want to make Canada the 51st state. Greenland will be the 52nd state. Venezuela can be 53rd.” The room greeted several of his remarks with dead silence. His cosplay as the Pirate King was not received as a good-humored takeoff from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He went on. “So many people in the room I hate,” he said in a display of honesty. “Most of you I like,” he claimed. Then, at his peak euphoria, he flew off to Mar-a-Lago to plan his attack on Iran, which took place 27 days later.

Trump’s imperialism of piracy and plunder is less of a system even than that of the earliest imperialism of 17th century privateers raiding the Spanish Main, the divine right of kings, and monarchs dividing up the spoils as favors to create their lords and earls. His schemes of aggrandizement operating by threat and force are justified by no larger rationale, nothing as exalted as “the white man’s burden”, marauding wherever and however he can to seize resources.

Bartek Rozanski has added a photo to the pool:

gentle sunset above minato city as seen from odaiba island in tokyo, japan

in camera multiple exposure