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‘Audiences no longer laugh if you call their town crap’: can Phil Wang heal divided Britain?

He’s the perfect comedian to cool down these incendiary times. As Philly Philly takes his Uh Oh standup show on tour, he talks about woke traps, lefty blindspots – and gen Z’s lurch to the right

Born in Stoke-on-Trent to a British mother and Chinese-Malaysian father then raised in Borneo and educated in Brunei, Bath and Cambridge, Phil Wang – or “Old Wang”, as he refers to himself mock-imperiously on stage – has certainly been around. Today, the 36-year-old standup with the pleasantly befuddled air is in a cafe near his home in London, wearing high-waisted baggy black trousers, a blue shirt, salmon-coloured New Balances and a baseball cap bearing the word “Chump”. Most significantly, he is sporting a moustache.

Wang went public with his face furniture two years ago but the upcoming tour of his new show, Uh Oh, will mark the first time he has taken it out on the road. Is the tache here for good? “Well, I’ve got five minutes of standup on it now,” he says over coffee. “Until I come up with a better five minutes, it’s staying.”

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Tortured, humiliated and killed: the women who disappear into Myanmar’s prisons

The military junta has detained thousands of political prisoners since the 2021 coup, and a pattern of gender-based abuses is becoming clear

In August 2021, news spread across a Myanmar protesters’ network that Thazin*, an activist and former university student, had been killed. The protest she attended that summer in Mandalay had been broken up by soldiers shooting and driving cars into the crowds.

Most of the demonstrators were able to jump on to their motorcycles and flee. Thazin was not among them, and word spread that a young woman had been seen shot dead.

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‘Highway of death’: the Ukrainian drone campaign menacing Russian logistics

Remote aircraft targeting supply traffic on route connecting occupied regions to Russia

Russian forces call it the “Novorossiya” route, the crucial main supply line that snakes through the Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s occupation, linking Rostov-on-Don in Russia to Melitopol, Mariupol and Crimea via the Sea of Azov coastline.

In recent months, however, Ukrainian forces have given the R-280 a new name – “the highway of death” – in reference to the Ukrainian drones that dominate the airspace above the road, hunting down convoys of Russian military traffic.

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Young, ambitious and out of work: ‘I’ve gone from Oxford to zero jobs. It’s a bit of a fall’

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Those unemployed for a year or more explain how they are coping

Thomas doesn’t leave the house much. Apart from walking his dog, the only other excursion the 24-year-old regularly makes is a “humiliating” weekly trip to Iceland, where he stocks up on seven £1 frozen meals, usually an assortment of bland curries with the occasional garishly sweet, takeaway-style Chinese meal. “You’re going in and buying seven and the cashier is 100% thinking: oh, that’s one a day,” he says.

Half the time, he doesn’t bother eating them. “You just sit there and go: I don’t want it again. I’ve had it for two days on the trot.”

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The EU is inviting the Taliban to Brussels. Europe’s credibility lies in tatters

As ICE-style deportation rules come into force, the unsavoury circle the EU wants migrant deals with includes the Afghan regime. This is a nadir

I sometimes think of the former EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, who just six years ago spoke of crafting a European migration policy with “cool heads and warm hearts”. What’s happened since is the exact opposite.

Governments across Europe – with the exception of Spain – are cracking down harder than ever before on migrants through measures they once dismissed as politically toxic. It is a dream come true not only for the EU’s far right but also for mainstream conservatives and centre-left politicians such as Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen.

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Claudia Sheinbaum: the wildly popular Mexican president dealing with drug violence, disappearances and Donald Trump

She started as an activist. Now she is Mexico’s president. Has she stayed true to her ideals?

The president’s dressmaker works at home, down a narrow road in a working-class neighbourhood on the southernmost edge of Mexico City. There is no sign, just the house number marked in chalk on a rusted metal door. In the brightly lit, pink-walled room at the back of her modest house, Olivia Trujillo sits at her sewing machine, piecing together the president’s signature suits and dresses. Trujillo sews everything here, accompanied only by her family, three dogs, and one green parrot. Once finished, an assistant spirits away the items by motorcycle straight to the National Palace, where the president lives. Claudia Sheinbaum’s clothing – tailored from modest fabrics produced in Mexico and featuring Indigenous motifs – is one of the many ways that her administration communicates its slogan: “For the good of all, first the poor.”

The dressmaker has just one problem with the president. People who wear made-to-measure clothes normally sit for the tailor twice: first, to have their measurements taken, then a second time for final adjustments. “Not once has she done a fitting for me, never!” says Trujillo, an exacting and neatly turned-out woman in her 60s. She knows the president is busy. “Still,” she objects, “any normal woman does a fitting for important clothes, like their wedding dress.”

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Knicks beat Spurs with largest NBA finals comeback to move to brink of first title since 1973

  • Knicks erase 29-point deficit to win Game 4

  • Anunoby scores winner with 2.3 seconds left

  • New York take commanding 3-1 Finals lead

The New York Knicks stared into the abyss and somehow found a way out.

Facing a 29-point deficit in front of a shell-shocked Madison Square Garden crowd, New York completed the largest comeback in NBA finals history on Wednesday night when OG Anunoby’s tip-in off a Jalen Brunson missed three made the difference in a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4. The Knicks are within one win of their first NBA championship in 53 years.

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Veilingsite Catawiki boekt eerste winst sinds 2020

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Veilingsite Catawiki heeft vorig jaar voor het eerst in vijf jaar een nettowinst geboekt. Het Nederlandse internetbedrijf zegt dat dit te danken is aan investeringen in technologie, die schaalvergroting mogelijk maakten. Tegelijkertijd groeit volgens Catawiki de vraag naar luxe- en verzamelobjecten, waaronder Pokémonkaarten, postzegels, horloges en sieraden.

De omzet steeg in 2025 met 9 procent tot 111 miljoen euro. Daarop boekte Catawiki een nettowinst van 5,8 miljoen euro, terwijl het bedrijf in 2024 nog een verlies van 4,6 miljoen euro noteerde. Het gaat om de hoogste winst ooit voor het in 2008 opgerichte bedrijf.

Volgens Catawiki steeg het aantal nieuwe bieders vorig jaar met een vijfde, tot een totaal van 1,6 miljoen bieders, waarbij de bekendheid internationaal toenam. In Spanje en Portugal steeg het aantal nieuwe bieders bijvoorbeeld met de helft. Verzamelaars kochten via de veilingsite 3,7 miljoen objecten, 9 procent meer dan een jaar eerder.

De groei gaat gepaard met kritiek. Kopers en verkopers zeiden vorig jaar tegen actualiteitenprogramma EenVandaag dat de kwaliteit van het platform daalt. Daarbij was er veel kritiek op de Catawiki-experts, die op basis van ingestuurde informatie en foto's de echtheid van verzamelobjecten vaststellen. Een gecertificeerde taxateur stelde tegenover het programma dat dit onmogelijk is zonder de spullen fysiek te beoordelen.


De eindeloze rijkdom van de oude Egyptische verhaalcultuur

De belangrijkste teksten uit drieduizend jaar Egyptische geschiedenis zijn vertaald in één machtig boek: 900 pagina’s vol sprookjes, spreuken, hymnen en liefdesgedichten. „Je weet ongeveer wat er staat, maar je moet verdomd goed kijken.”


Kapen rijke woningkopers ‘van buiten’ de huizen weg voor lokale koopstarters? Kadaster bemoeit zich met de discussie

Het Kadaster bekeek of deze vaak gehoorde stelling klopt. Wat in elk geval opvalt: de ‘verhuisafstand’ is de afgelopen jaren toegenomen.