We booked our hotel because of its swimming pool but a hefty hourly fee to use it wasn’t mentioned
My partner and I paid £2,150 for a week’s all-inclusive break in Marrakech with easyJet Holidays.
We chose the Jaal Riad Resort Hotel because of its pool and spa. When we arrived, we were told that use of the heated pool cost £24 a person an hour, the Jacuzzi £24 for 20 minutes, and the hammam was £16 for 20 minutes.
Continue reading...Former immigration minister criticised by inquiry chair for failing to give statement about ‘wretched’ Manston site
The former Conservative immigration minister Robert Jenrick has been rebuked by the chair of an inquiry for failing to provide vital evidence about conditions for small boat arrivals at a controversial processing centre.
The independent Manston inquiry was set up to examine the events surrounding the detention of thousands of people who arrived by small boat between 1 June 2022 and 22 November 2022 and were held at a former military base in Manston, Kent.
Continue reading...Unpack the latest viral moments and the week’s celebrity whispers with Clara & Munroe. Plus, the grim story of a man cashing in on the rise in young suicides.
If the first episode is anything to go by, Clara Amfo (let loose from BBC broadcasting) and activist Munroe Bergdorf could well be your fun commute companions. The pair are passionate, incisive and just the right amount of gossipy as they unpack the latest pop culture moments – such as what the loud conversation around Olivia Rodrigo’s baby-doll dress says about women in music. Our one complaint? Half an hour isn’t long enough! Hollie Richardson
Widely available, episodes weekly
Exclusive: The work will feature some of the photographer’s most powerful images from his 70-year career
After more than seven decades of covering conflicts around the world, Don McCullin will return to Vietnam and his best-known images for his final book.
The photographer, who got his start aged 23 when his image of a gang in Finsbury Park was published in the Observer, has decided to revisit the war and his 12-day stint with US marines during the battle of Hue in 1968.
Continue reading...Can a long road trip work with children? I set out to relive a classic journey from Bilbao to Saint-Malo I did in my freewheeling 20s
The moment came on about day four. A cloud-like mist was drenching our faces, hair and clothes, despite the thick canopy of trees overhead. My six-year-old daughter silently trudged uphill pushing her bike, her mouth set in a grim line. I looked again at the blue blob on Google Maps, which seemed, unfeasibly, to indicate we were on the right path. I thought, again, about the diminishing supply of chocolate in my backpack.
“See! I told you! We’re having an adventure,” I said with forced jollity. She didn’t even look up.
Continue reading...This corrective to our habitual emphasis on competition had me writing ‘wow’ in the margins again and again
When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the Industrial Revolution and British colonialism were in the ascendant. Charles Dickens had published Hard Times five years earlier; Queen Victoria nominally ruled a fifth of the world’s population. Darwin, writes science writer Rowan Hooper, crafted his evolutionary theory to deliver what he figured his audience wanted to hear: “an account of nature as a competitive struggle”. Natural selection was launched into a world that was “colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and ruled by the upper class” – and Darwin’s central message, crudely paraphrased by the philosopher Herbert Spencer as “survival of the fittest”, chimed with the times.
Hooper adores Darwin – his account of visiting Darwin’s Kent residence Down House radiates reverence (“it’s a pseudo-religious experience”). But he feels that Darwinism and its union with genetics in the so-called “modern synthesis” has placed undue emphasis on competition in the natural world and underplayed the roles of cooperation and collaboration. In redressing that imbalance, Togetherness is not an attempt to make evolution cuddlier and more palatable; rather, it is a corrective deeply informed by what we have learned since Darwin about how nature works. Written with immense charm and passion, and packed with eye-popping facts, it is also a paean to the wonders of nature and the value and urgency of preserving them.
Continue reading...Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms, conservationists want to create the region’s first underwater protected area
The harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.
For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact.
Continue reading...Nick Dowling spent decades in manufacturing and consultancy. The Covid pandemic opened his eyes to other possibilities, though he knew he’d be starting from scratch
Nick Dowling was the only person in the doctor’s waiting room when the practice nurse came out, glanced around and said to the receptionist with a confused look: “I was expecting to meet a student here.” Dowling raised his hand. At 60, he has undertaken an apprenticeship and hopes to qualify as a registered nursing associate this autumn.
Dowling had worked for decades in engineering and manufacturing, but his latest placements have taken him from a general practice to a psychiatric unit, from ward nursing to urgent treatment centres. Sometimes the shifts are 12 hours long, and, at £14 an hour, pay less than he has earned in decades. So why is he doing it?
Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?
Continue reading...As the world waited for rational outcomes from irrational players, the people being bombed were forced to adjust to the fact of terror as part of daily life
“Humans take a lot of killing,” wrote Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes. As bleak a phrase as it is, McCourt was talking about resilience, how much poverty and abuse a person can withstand and still survive. But the other side of human capacity for pain is how much can be forced upon us and normalised. It is bewildering how war – shocking and intolerable at first – quickly becomes a matter of fact. Few conflicts have demonstrated that more vividly than the war on Iran. For months it was a matter of low-grade strikes, hot and cold rhetoric, and near-conclusions to the hostilities that never came. Sharp political crisis manifested as grinding hardship and upheaval for the people.
We have a peace deal now, for that be thankful, but think what preceded it. Over the past week alone, Donald Trump had ordered strikes on Iran, and expressed a desire to take Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. He then prematurely declared that the US had ended the war on Iran in a “great settlement”. The markets did their customary flicker in response to the announcement of a deal, but the rest of us, not invested in oil futures, could have been forgiven for not registering a reaction to imminent peace – he had made the same promise almost 40 times. In press conferences, social media posts and interviews over the past few months, Trump had said relax, it’s almost over. Just how not over it was can be traced by the strikes and counter-strikes across the region, the closure of the strait of Hormuz, general global economic upheaval and specific Middle East destabilisation.
Continue reading...Former Ofcom chair says he welcomed arrival of rightwing news channel five years ago in name of ‘plurality’
Critics of GB News are part of a “liberal, Islington consensus” bent on limiting freedom of expression, Michael Grade, the recently departed chair of Britain’s media watchdog, has said.
The Conservative peer, whose time at Ofcom has been criticised over the handling of the rightwing news channel, said he welcomed the arrival of the broadcaster five years ago in the name of “plurality”.
Continue reading...With an adaptation of Night and Day hitting cinemas, the pioneering author’s work continues to inspire audiences
She’s long been admired by students of English literature, but 85 years after her death, Virginia Woolf has broken out of the seminar room to become an unexpected cultural phenomenon.
The author of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, whose innovative prose helped redefine the modern novel, is finding a new audience through a string of high-profile adaptations.
Continue reading...Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
WASHINGTON (ANP/AFP) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump heeft zijn tachtigste verjaardag gevierd met een aantal bloedige kooigevechten op het gazon van het Witte Huis. Samen met duizenden toeschouwers keek hij toe hoe de UFC-vechters elkaar te lijf gingen.
Trump liep bij het begin samen met UFC-baas Dana White vanuit het Oval Office naar het groots opgezette tijdelijke stadion. De winnende sporters prezen Trump in hun speeches na afloop van de wedstrijd voor het organiseren van het evenement. Een van hen zorgde voor ophef door in de microfoon te schreeuwen dat Michelle Obama, de vrouw van oud-president Barack Obama, een man is.
Het evenement kreeg van tevoren ook veel kritiek, omdat het niet zou passen bij een president. Ook probeerden inwoners van Washington de gevechten tegen te houden, omdat de tuin van het Witte Huis volgens hen daar niet voor bedoeld is. Ze klaagden over het commerciële karakter van de wedstrijden, door de vele sponsordeals die waren gesloten. De rechter ging hier niet in mee.
TEHERAN (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - Scheepseigenaren wachten meer duidelijkheid af over een mogelijke heropening van de Straat van Hormuz. Volgens de Pakistaanse premier Shehbaz Sharif wordt een vredesakkoord tussen de VS en Iran vrijdag ondertekend. De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump meldde dat de belangrijke zeestraat op dezelfde dag weer opengaat. Reders laten aan persbureau Bloomberg weten op meer details te wachten of een veilige doortocht ook echt mogelijk is.
De Straat van Hormuz is sinds het begin van de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten grotendeels dicht voor scheepvaart. Door de zeestraat gaat normaal een vijfde van de wereldwijde olie. De blokkade heeft ertoe geleid dat de energieprijzen fors zijn gestegen. Door een mogelijke heropening is de prijs van Brentolie, de maatstaf voor olie uit het Midden-Oosten, maandag met bijna 5 procent gedaald.
Er zouden zo'n zeshonderd schepen in de Perzische Golf vastliggen die door de zeestraat willen varen, stelt onderzoeksbureau Kpler.
TOKIO (ANP) - De beurzen in Tokio en Seoul zijn maandag hard gestegen door de hoop op een einde aan de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten en een snelle heropening van de Straat van Hormuz. Volgens de Pakistaanse premier Shehbaz Sharif is een vredesakkoord tussen de VS en Iran bereikt, dat op vrijdag 19 juni in Zwitserland door beide landen wordt ondertekend.
Beide partijen hebben aangekondigd dat "de militaire activiteiten op alle fronten, inclusief in Libanon, onmiddellijk en definitief worden beëindigd", aldus Sharif. De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump meldde dat de Straat van Hormuz, de belangrijke transportroute voor olie uit het Midden-Oosten, vrijdag weer opengaat.
De prijs van Brentolie, de maatstaf voor olie uit het Midden-Oosten, zakte 4,7 procent tot 83,22 dollar per vat. Amerikaanse olie kostte ruim 5 procent minder op 80,55 dollar per vat. De Nikkei in Tokio noteerde kort voor sluiting van de handel 4,9 procent hoger en de Kospi in Seoul klom 5,3 procent. Beide landen zijn sterk afhankelijk van de import van olie uit het Midden-Oosten.
BONGURI has added a photo to the pool:
すごく目を引いた、一本の立ち枯れた木。
Photo taken at Kaore gorge, Itadori area, Seki city, Gifu pref.
niggyl :) has added a photo to the pool:
Snow day on Pine Forest Moor. Overland Track, Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania.
These bushes were burned when a fire (dry lighting) ripped through here in early February, 2025. Parts of the track and a private hut were destroyed along with thousands of hectares of wilderness.
Remote fire crews did a fantastic job under the conditions.
Leica Q2 Monochrom, Summilux 28mm f/1.7, 1/1250th sec at f/5.6, ISO 200. Red filter.
Originally posted it in 3:2 but the sky annoyed me - re-upped in 16:9
