Basic-Fit, Europe's largest gym chain, has confirmed data including the bank details of around a million customers was stolen from its systems.…
From dinosaur-hunting in Jurassic Park to high-seas terror in Dead Calm, Sam Neill looks back on a remarkable career – and is ready for your questions
There aren’t many actors who have gone down in cinematic history for simply taking off a safari hat and a pair of sunglasses. But when you think of Sam Neill, you probably think of that moment in Jurassic Park when he stands up in the Jeep, removes his shades, and stares, slack-jawed, at a towering Brachiosaurus. Don’t let the explanation of how CGI worked back in the 90s ruin it for you. “What I’m actually looking at is Steven Spielberg with a big long stick with a tennis ball at the end,” he told Graham Norton, even going as far as to recreate the scene for laughs. Sometimes, great acting is just very committed pretending.
Born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, Neill first came to attention in a white shirt and black tie in period drama My Brilliant Career, before taking a turn to the darker side with Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, and In the Mouth of Madness. Hollywood soon beckoned – as second in command to Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October, as Holly Hunter’s husband in The Piano, and as a geeky scientist in cult favourite Event Horizon.
Continue reading...The California Democrat suspended his campaign for governor amid sexual assault and misconduct allegations by a former staff member and at least three other women
Congressman Eric Swalwell’s departure from the California governor race comes at a pivotal moment in the “wide-open” primary race, just weeks before voters receive postal ballots ahead of the 2 June election.
This jungle primary sees candidates of all parties competing, and the top two finishers regardless of party will advance to the November general election. The winner of the election will replace outgoing governor Gavin Newsom and lead the United States’ most populous state.
Pope Leo XIV has said he has “no intention” of debating president Donald Trump over the Iran war. This comes after Leo suggested over the weekend that “delusion of omnipotence” was fuelling the US-Israel war in Iran. In response, Trump said he doesn’t think the pontiff is not “doing a very good job” and that the US-born leader of the Catholic church was “a very liberal person”. “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” he said in a social media post, while also suggesting the pontiff should “stop catering to the Radical Left”. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Leo said: “I have no intention to debate with (Trump). The message is the same: to promote peace.”
Trump has said the US Navy would start blockading the Hormuz strait and also prohibit every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran. The US Central Command said later it would begin a blockade of all Iranian Gulf ports and coastal areas on Monday at 10am ET (5.30pm in Iran and 2pm GMT), effectively seizing control of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...I met the mother of my children on Twitter – and made lasting friendships. But now social media isn’t so social
I used to post an awful lot on Twitter. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day exactly – but after discovering the platform in late 2010, I became intoxicated by the feeling that I was able to participate in a sort of global conversation. Here, I felt, was a platform that anyone could join, and on which anyone could be listened to. Twitter seemed to connect people: commentators spoke in enthused terms about the role Twitter played in the Occupy movement; the student fees protests; the Arab spring.
I posted, I made friends, I met people, I talked to people who I would never have been able to connect with otherwise. The relationships I made on Twitter shaped my values, my politics, my life. The “weird Twitter” style of humour gave me a fair few phrases that will never stop rattling around my brain: every time I walk into a pharmacy, I think about buying some ear medication for my sick uncle “who’s a model by the way”. Whenever I read something about Watergate, I imagine Richard Nixon condemning the movie Fantastic Mr Fox on the basis that its lead character wears “a [expletive] corduroy suit”.
Tom Whyman is an academic philosopher and a writer
Continue reading...The scene at the food bank, recalls the director, where Katie is so hungry, she pours baked beans into her hand from a tin and eats them cold, came from a real story
In 2016, we were – as we continue to be – in a time of mean-spiritedness. If you were vulnerable or needed support, you were met with punishment, and there was a constant vilifying of people who needed help. I, Daniel Blake was based on that. It’s very much a film about the cruelty of the system that says: “Poverty is the fault of the poor. You’re not striving enough. You’re not doing enough job interviews.” Dave Johns’ character, Daniel Blake, shows us this. He needs to work, he wants to work, but the system makes it hard for people not to be tripped up.
Continue reading...A reincarnation mystery drives this exploration of spiritual interconnectedness in a globalised world
What happens when a novelist cares more about their plot, or their message, than their prose? Plot and message have this much in common: they travel smoothest on the lubricating oil of cliche. Thus you might find yourself enjoying, at the level of story or argument, a novel that trundles along via lumps of workhorse novelese like the following: “manicured gardens”, “apple of their father’s eye”, “venerable patriarch”, “Little did I know then”, “keeping a weather eye”, “money was tight”, “Barely had the words left her mouth”, “engulfed by civil strife”, “I was taken aback”, “a piercing cry”, “an ear-splitting cacophony”, “a lick of paint”, “It was a marvel to behold”, “It was as though she were a woman possessed”, “The ceremonies went off without a hitch”, “She and I were polar opposites” …
This is, for much of its length, the experience of reading Amitav Ghosh’s 11th novel, Ghost-Eye. The plot has been quite intricately worked out. It seeds the reader’s curiosity, especially in the first half, with all sorts of intriguing mysteries. The subject – the various collisions of global and local in the post-second world war age – is important. But much of the prose is dead on arrival. I say this with regret. Like many readers, I think of Ghosh with gratitude: not just for the narrative riches of his Ibis trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire), but for the work of intellectual framing he performed in his 2016 polemic The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Ghosh is at least partly responsible for the arrival of the climate emergency as an urgent subject in literary fiction over the last decade. He woke us from our slumbers.
Continue reading...Presidential elections in Djibouti and Benin at the weekend highlighted how a costly electoral system is reshaping democracy
Alexis Mohamed would have loved to stand against his former boss. A longtime adviser to Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, Mohamed resigned last September, citing democratic regression in the country.
But at the election at the weekend, Mohamed was not on the ballot. Now outside the country, he says he cannot return home to file nomination papers or campaign freely without credible security guarantees. Even if he were allowed to compete, nomination costs would still loom as a steep barrier in a political environment many critics describe as ceremonial, with Guelleh the habitual winner.
Continue reading...Experts say climate pattern could supercharge extreme weather events and push temperatures to record highs
There is a high likelihood that the phenomenon known as “El Niño” will emerge this summer – and it could be exceptionally strong. A so-called “super El Niño” could supercharge extreme weather events and push global temperatures to record heights next year if it develops, according to experts.
Meteorologists are keeping a close eye on the climate patterns developing in the Pacific Ocean that will enable stronger predictions about what’s to come in the year ahead.
Continue reading...Undisclosed number of names and contact and reservation details accessed in latest cybercrime attempt
The accommodation reservation website Booking.com has suffered a data breach with “unauthorised parties” gaining access to customers’ details.
The platform said it “noticed some suspicious activity involving unauthorised third parties being able to access some of our guests’ booking information”.
Continue reading...Hiro_A has added a photo to the pool:
BRUSSEL (ANP) - De Europese Commissie wil volgende week woensdag een serie maatregelen presenteren om de hoge energieprijzen tegen te gaan. Dat zei voorzitter van de Europese Commissie Ursula von der Leyen na overleg met alle Eurocommissarissen. De maatregelen worden donderdag besproken door de EU-leiders, die dan bij elkaar zijn voor een informeel overleg op Cyprus.
De maatregelen zijn deels al besproken met de Eurocommissarissen, zei Von der Leyen. Het gaat bijvoorbeeld om coördinatie vanuit Brussel over gasvoorraden, om te voorkomen dat lidstaten tegen elkaar gaan opbieden om gas op te kopen. Ook wil Brussel gezamenlijk coördineren hoe bijvoorbeeld oliereserves worden vrijgegeven en of nationale maatregelen niet de energiemarkt verstoren.
Verder wil Brussel met de lidstaten kijken hoe het kwetsbare huishoudens en sectoren financieel kan bijstaan tegen de hoge energieprijzen. Die maatregelen moeten gericht, snel en van korte duur zijn, zei de voorzitter.
De bizarre persconferentie van Melania Trump over haar vermeende banden met financier en zedendelinquent Jeffrey Epstein heeft in de Verenigde Staten en daarbuiten voor opschudding gezorgd. In een zeldzaam openbaar optreden vanuit het Witte Huis ontkende de First Lady dat Epstein degene was die haar eind jaren negentig aan haar huidige echtgenoot, president Donald Trump, voorstelde. Daarmee ging ze frontaal in tegen jarenlange speculaties in Amerikaanse media over de rol van Epstein in de begindagen van hun relatie.
Tijdens de opname van de Sky News-podcast “Trump100” kreeg presentator Mark live in de uitzending een telefoontje van Paolo Zampolli, een in New York gevestigde Italiaans-Amerikaanse zakenman en society‑figuur. Zampolli claimde dat híj de echte koppelaar was tussen Donald en Melania – en zei desnoods “onder ede” te willen verklaren dat hij het stel aan elkaar heeft voorgesteld. Zijn interventie voedt de vraag wie er belang heeft bij het herschrijven van de ontstaansmythe van het machtigste koppel van Amerika.
De timing van Melania’s uitlatingen is opvallend. Terwijl zij afstand neemt van Epstein, ligt Donald Trump opnieuw onder vuur, onder meer vanwege het ongeblurred online delen van een video waarop de moord op een vrouw te zien is – een stap die zelfs binnen zijn eigen politieke omgeving ongemak veroorzaakt. In sommige kringen klinkt inmiddels de roep om een beroep te doen op het 25e amendement van de Amerikaanse grondwet, dat het mogelijk maakt een president wegens onbekwaamheid af te zetten.
Welke landen zijn de economische winnaars en verliezers van de Iran-oorlog? Deze week presenteert het Internationaal Monetair Fonds nieuwe – hele onzekere – economische ramingen voor de wereldeconomie.