Trinidadian singer and songwriter hailed as a living legend and the greatest calypsonian of all time

The singer and songwriter Mighty Sparrow, who has died aged 91, was quite simply the greatest calypsonian there has ever been. For at least five decades he was a monumental figure on the Caribbean music scene, while also capturing the hearts and minds of millions of fans around the world with self-penned songs that were the quintessential calypso mix of political commentary, humour, sexual innuendo and melody.

Loved and feted by Trinidadians more than any other public figure in the island’s history, he was to calypso what Bob Marley was to reggae – an inspirational living legend. In Britain, no less than elsewhere, the sheer wit and quality of classic songs such as Jean and Dinah, Congo Man and Mae Mae brought calypso to many who would never otherwise have encountered the music form, particularly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when he was in his prime.

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Three others wounded as jet-powered drones increasingly target Ukraine’s capital, with medical centre also hit

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Russia has hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv with a drone, killing at least one person in the latest daytime attack on Ukraine’s capital.

Flames tore through the historic building on Monday as people clambered out of first- and second-floor windows to escape, in dramatic scenes increasingly familiar in the heavily bombarded city.

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The tournament was treated with skepticism when it was introduced in 2018, but it shows that sometimes administrators get things right

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England’s first game after the 2022 World Cup was a 2-1 win away over Italy. Their first game after the 2018 World Cup was a 2-1 defeat to Spain. Their first game after the 2014 World Cup was a 1-0 friendly win over Norway – and that was not the Norway of Erling Haaland, Martin Ødegaard and Antonio Nusa but of Joshua King, Håvard Nordtveit and Tarik Elyounoussi. The first game after the 2010 World Cup was a 2-1 friendly win over Hungary.

The Italy and Spain games perhaps had their appeal, but the sense of anticlimax was palpable. It’s inevitable, of course: how can a side or its supporters pick themselves to go again after the unparalleled drama of a World Cup? Major tournaments, whether a team does well or badly, are sport played with maximum emotion; there cannot be anything except a comedown, whether after glorious victory, thrilling defeat or ignominious exit.

This is an extract from Soccer Desk, a newsletter from the Guardian US. Subscribe for free here.

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Environmentalists decry move that relaxes requirements on automakers to control pollution from gas-powered cars

The Trump administration on Monday announced it was slashing clean car rules that had been aimed at reducing planet-heating emissions and boosting electric vehicles.

The move, which was criticized by environmentalists, relaxes requirements on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and light trucks for model years 2022 through 2031.

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Attack on two Jewish men in north London earlier this year was originally treated as terrorism

The stabbings of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north London, in April are being treated as an alleged hate crime not a terrorist attack, police have said.

Essa Suleiman, 45, was arrested by the Metropolitan police on suspicion of attempted murder shortly after the stabbings on 29 April.

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The cookbook author shares a trio of lighter pasta recipes for the warmer months ahead

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Szubanski’s latest book delves into both her mother’s decline, and her triumphant fight for marriage equality

There is a certain tension in the celebrity memoir between what is confessed and what is withheld. We want to know the things the celebrity isn’t telling us, and comb through what they do say looking for secrets, the flaws or inconsistencies, the myopic and self-serving. Most celebrities try to thread their stories through this needle, giving us the sense of candidness without revealing too much of anything. After all, there are reputations to uphold.

Magda Szubanski doesn’t write those memoirs. She writes about her life with such emotional precision, like a forensic pathologist wielding a scalpel; never aiming for amiability nor belly laughs, but a kind of equilibrium of understanding instead. She processes the tectonic forces in her life in order to stand on firmer ground, like building a mound on which to better survey the topography. I Can’t Tell You But I Will is the follow-up to her 2015 memoir Reckoning, about her father and the scars of war; this memoir turns the attention away from him and on to her mother, Margaret.

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OpenAI chief scientist also among authors of report on prospect of ‘most consequential technological development in history’

Two of the “godfathers” of modern AI and senior executives at OpenAI and Anthropic have warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”, which they say could be the most consequential technological development in history.

A report co-authored by the Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, considered godfathers of modern AI for their work in the field, urges politicians to act now before there is runaway progress in the technology.

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George Russell won his third Grand Prix of the season with victory in Baku, the Mercedes man standing on the top step of the rostrum for the first time since Austria. In doing so, he cut team mate Kimi Antonelli's lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 66 points.

Xavi Hernández is goed begonnen als bondscoach van Oranje. Telkens legt hij een verband tussen de kracht van het collectief en goed presteren. „Hij geeft mij gewoon vertrouwen.”

Al dagenlang wordt het gebied geteisterd door hevige regenval, een ruime maand na de verwoestende overstromingen die 1.400 doden tot gevolg hadden.

ELCAN KE-7A has added a photo to the pool:

026年8月8日に開催された第4回ぎふ長良川花火大会から、第2章、磯谷煙火店によるスターマイン「ふるさとの風と川の流れ」。The 2nd chapter, Starmines by Isogai enkaten from the 4th Gifu Nagara-gawa Fireworks Festival on 8 August 2026.

ELCAN KE-7A has added a photo to the pool:

026年8月8日に開催された第4回ぎふ長良川花火大会から、第2章、磯谷煙火店によるスターマイン「ふるさとの風と川の流れ」。The 2nd chapter, Starmines by Isogai enkaten from the 4th Gifu Nagara-gawa Fireworks Festival on 8 August 2026.

The Dutch government is backing an effort to build a FOSS workplace for public administration, including a desktop operating system based on NixOS. The DAWO Project has been gestating for some months, but it just got a lot more visible thanks to an in-depth report on Dutch tech news site Tweakers.net. DAWO stands for "Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid," or "Digital Autonomous Government Work Environment." Rather than a single product, its blueprint combines replaceable components for the operating system, cloud infrastructure, AI, communications, and collaborative working. Development remains at an early stage, but small-scale pilots are already under way within Dutch public bodies. The work acquired official status in July, when the Dutch government's ICBR – the Interdepartmental Committee on Government Operations – commissioned three government IT providers to develop a standardized, more sovereign digital workplace: DICTU, SSC-ICT and the ICT division of DUO, the Education Executive Agency. The wider blueprint comes from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, or BZK. Its components include MijnBureau, a self-hosted workplace suite built from projects including Nextcloud, Collabora, Element and OpenProject. The MijnBureau developers are also collaborating with France's La Suite and aligning their work with Germany's openDesk. Regular Register readers will probably recognize the name openDesk: it's featured in several recent stories. OpenDesk is the suite that the International Criminal Court is adopting following US sanctions against senior court officials. (Tweakers mentions these sanctions as being a motivating factor behind the Dutch efforts.) The ICC is based in the Netherlands, in The Hague. According to a Reuters report, the Trump administration is planning wider sanctions against the ICC. OpenDesk is also a core part of the moves in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as we reported in July, and those in Switzerland which we covered earlier this month. Back in April, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities, or VNG, announced that four municipalities were taking part in the trials. Tweakers reports that the number has since doubled to eight – still a small fraction of the country's hundreds of municipalities. The project publishes code through the BZK's government-hosted Forgejo instance, with repositories also available through Codeberg for outside contributors. For its client OS, the project initially experimented with openSUSE, then Fedora, before settling on NixOS. The Reg FOSS desk has written about NixOS several times, including its radical approach to package management and the arrival of NixOS 22.11. NixOS offers more than a conveniently Dutch pedigree. It is not controlled by a commercial vendor, while its declarative configuration and reproducible deployments make it attractive for managing and auditing large fleets of machines. The Nix packaging system project was founded by a Dutchman, Eelco Dolstra; the first version of the NixOS distro built with it by another, Armijn Hemel; and the NixOS Foundation is based in the Netherlands. The Nix community has not been without controversy. In 2023, conference organizers withdrew sponsorship from US autonomous weapons vendor Anduril following objections from contributors. The dispute fed into a broader argument over project governance that culminated the following year in a fork called Auxolotl. FOSS projects have little control over who uses their code, while attempts to restrict particular users can create problems of their own. Government interest does, however, bring money and momentum. As we noted following the launch of Euro-Office in April and Collabora's AI-infused CODE suite in June, the scent of public sector cash is proving highly effective at stimulating activity and cooperation in the FOSS world. ®

Achttien miljoen dollar opzijgezet en uiteindelijk niets meer over. Sharon Stone vertelde in 2024 hoe ze tijdens haar herstel van een beroerte ook financieel de grond onder haar voeten verloor. Een onthutsend verhaal, maar niet hetzelfde als de mededeling dat de actrice vandaag blut is.

Niet alleen haar gezondheid kwijt

In 2001 kreeg de actrice, bekend van Basic Instinct, een beroerte. Er volgde een langdurig herstel. Stone beschreef later hoe haar zicht, reuk en tast veranderden en hoe ze een paar jaar niet kon lezen. Het kostte haar naar eigen zeggen zeven jaar om te herstellen.

Juist in die kwetsbare periode ging het ook met haar geld mis, vertelde ze. Ze had door haar succesvolle carrière 18 miljoen dollar gespaard. Toen ze zich weer met haar bankrekening kon bezighouden, was dat bedrag verdwenen.

Het bleef in haar relaas niet bij een leeg banksaldo. Zelfs haar koelkast en telefoon stonden op naam van anderen, zei ze. Mensen hadden tijdens haar herstel misbruik van haar gemaakt.

Een beroemd gezicht bleek geen bescherming tegen financiële kwetsbaarheid.

Wat er precies gebeurde, blijft onduidelijk

Hoe al dat geld precies verdween, wordt uit haar uitspraken niet duidelijk. Haar relaas is geen openbare boekhouding en levert evenmin bewijs dat het volledige bedrag is gestolen. Het is Stones eigen beschrijving van een periode waarin ze de controle over haar gezondheid én haar financiën verloor.

Dat onderscheid doet niets af aan de ernst van haar verhaal. Het voorkomt wel dat een persoonlijke terugblik verandert in een stellige beschuldiging of een actueel faillissementsbericht.

Toen geen geld, niet automatisch nu blut

Er zit bovendien een belangrijk verschil tussen toen en nu. Stone sprak in 2024 over de gevolgen van haar beroerte uit 2001. Die uitspraken zijn dus geen beschrijving van haar huidige bankrekening.

In augustus 2025 vertelde ze nog dat ze als model werkte en daarmee meer verdiende dan met films. Een bedrag noemde ze daarbij niet. Ook dat vertelt niet hoeveel vermogen ze heeft, maar het maakt wel duidelijk waarom de simpele conclusie dat ze nu blut is te kort door de bocht gaat.

Een leeg banksaldo van toen is geen vermogensoverzicht van vandaag.

Stone wilde zich naar eigen zeggen niet vastklampen aan ziekte, woede of verbittering. Ze koos ervoor vooruit te kijken en betekenis in haar leven te zoeken. Haar verhaal gaat daarmee niet alleen over verdwenen miljoenen, maar ook over opnieuw beginnen wanneer vanzelfsprekende zekerheden wegvallen.

De tijdlijn in het kort

2001: de beroerte. In een interview uit 2024 blikte Stone terug op het verlies van haar spaargeld. In 2025 sprak ze over inkomsten uit modellenwerk. Het gaat om verschillende momenten, niet om één actuele financiële momentopname.

Meer weten?

• Saar: Sharon Stone over haar gezondheid en verdwenen spaargeld
• Nouveau: de langdurige gevolgen van haar hersenbloeding
• De Telegraaf: Stone blikt terug op haar financiële verlies