The Partners in Mission Foodbank will relocate to a nearby building with twice the space as its current one early next year, its executive director announced Monday. Read More
A heat wave is descending over the Kingston region and Environment Canada is warning that humidex values could reach as high as 45 C during the day all week.Read More
This gut-punch documentary about the deaths of more than 500 asylum seekers – and the masked men rounding up refugees – makes a specific, horrific allegation. There should be severe consequences
We live in an age of overlapping crises, of too many red lines to count being crossed. A massacre here, an ecosystem breakdown there, shocking poverty close to home. Whenever news comes through of a boatload of desperate people drowning in the Mediterranean as they try to reach Europe from Africa, it barely registers – so it seems horribly likely that Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? will not be a landmark documentary. Especially during an election campaign in which the main parties are competing to be the toughest on repelling migrants, it probably won’t cause attitudes to change.
But it should. The film makes a specific, devastating allegation. It finds evidence that the Greek authorities – acting as a frontline border force on behalf of the EU, and the anti-migrant policies of its member governments – are not just neglectful towards asylum-seekers adrift at sea, but are actively, and forcefully, expelling some of those who make it across, outside the relevant due processes, returning them to the water and grave danger. It alternates between evidence of this practice and a reconstruction of the events of June 2023, when the fishing vessel Adriana set off from Libya carrying about 750 migrants, more than 500 of whom died when the boat sank in international waters off the Greek coast.
A first-half own goal settled the game. Didier Deschamps’ team played well within its limits. The Qatar 2022 finalists slept a little in the first half, ran through some patterns, opened up the right side of Austria’s defence whenever Kylian Mbappé stretched his legs. Austria were always kept at arm’s length. Deschamps will be pleased with the control in midfield offered by Adrien Rabiot and N’Golo Kanté.
The deathly slow opening episode, heavy with recaps and diplomatic chats, might not win over any new fans but it does ramp up spectacularly. You’ll be begging to watch more!
After dragging itself out of the burning embers of Game of Thrones, the highly anticipated prequel House of the Dragon had the potential to veer off in any number of outrageous directions. Its predecessor often seemed to do whatever it felt like. From zombies and sacrificial infanticide to incest and castration, and you could never say it failed to go there. House of the Dragon proved to be more mannered, more sombre and, astonishingly for a cod-medieval series about icy blonds arguing over whose dragon is more fiery, more subtle. And here it is now, this enormous, splashy spin-off of one of the biggest shows of all time, once again insisting on being so frustratingly subtle about everything.
In the past, this subtlety was a strength as well as a weakness, and that remains the case for the first four episodes of season two, which is all that HBO released to critics in advance. It means that the characters have more depth, it is sparing with the default crude shocks, and it worms its way into your mind with a deceptive gentleness. Again, given that the beheadings and hangings and fights to the death arrive fairly promptly in season two, I appreciate that gentleness is another unlikely virtue. But it is there, nonetheless. This makes for a moreish series that is engrossing almost by stealth. By the end of episode four, when the excitement arrives in earnest, it certainly feels as if it has earned the right to show off.
House of the Dragon aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now in the UK; in the US it airs on HBO; in Australia it airs on Binge.
England players were reportedly targeted with racist abuse during the match, although it is understood that no complaints have been made from the England camp.
Chelsea Women’s commercial director to join in summer
NewCo aim to increase WSL and Championship revenues
The company that will run the Women’s Super League from next season is poised to make one of its first senior appointments by hiring Chelsea Women’s commercial director, Zarah Al-Kudcy.
NewCo is the temporary name for the company which will take over the WSL and Women’s Championship from the Football Association, and according to multiple sources Al‑Kudcy will join its chief executive, Nikki Doucet, as part of the leadership team this summer.
He remains a darling of the American right but the US Open champion has remade his image to match a retooled game
On the night before he won the US Open for a second time, Bryson DeChambeau told a gallery of reporters that he had started washing his balls in Epsom salt. No matter how carefully golf balls are manufactured, you see, there will always be errors and imperfections in the mass production of a 1.68in-diameter urethane-covered sphere with 328 dimples. Since the heavy side of an out-of-balance ball will float to the bottom in a solution of Epsom salt and water, DeChambeau has begun marking the top of each ball with a dot to ensure it’s always rolling over itself. “For most golf balls that we get, it’s not really that big of a deal,” DeChambeau explained. “I just try to be as precise as possible, and it’s one more step that I do to make sure my golf ball flies as straight as it possibly can fly, because I’m not that great at hitting it that straight.”
Not that long ago DeChambeau, a math prodigy who took a physics degree from Southern Methodist University, might have bypassed the ELI5 version for an explanation steeped in jargon and inaccessible to the layman. Instead he served up a made-for-social anecdote lapped up by the media that added a fresh chapter to an eccentric lore that belies the central‑casting appearance of a protypical American Jock™️.
All-rounder has only started one match in tournament
Curran could feature in Super Eights against West Indies
Sam Curran will collect an MBE when he gets back to the UK after the men’s T20 World Cup, the all‑rounder having been recognised in the king’s birthday honours last year for his starring role in England securing the trophy in late 2022.
This time around, however, Curran is battling to make the XI, with his one-off outing in the crucial 41-run victory against Namibia on Saturday coming about only after rain and the resulting 10-over match forced England to rejig their strategy. As a fiercely competitive player it is, needless to say, not exactly to his liking.
Robert Morris responds to claim by Oklahoma woman that he sexually abused her in 1980s when she was aged 12 to 16
A Texas evangelical pastor and former spiritual adviser to Donald Trump has confessed to sexually assaulting a young girl in his past.
Robert Morris, a founding pastor of Dallas-based Gateway megachurch, was accused by an Oklahoma woman of sexual abuse in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12 and continuing until the age of 16.
Victory in Stuttgart earned maiden title for 22-year-old
New British No 1 wants to be ‘one of world’s top players’
Jack Draper says he has far loftier goals than becoming British No 1 and he will tackle his next challenges with a renewed self-belief as he looks to follow up his breakthrough title run in Stuttgart with more great performances on home soil at Queen’s Club this week.
“It’s a huge honour and it’s a huge privilege, I know, but I hadn’t thought about that at all,” Draper said this week after becoming British No 1 for the first time.
Leader says election is first step ‘for our party and for me’ as Gove dismisses idea of Farage in No 10 as ‘ridiculous’
Nigel Farage has unveiled a raft of populist pledges, massive tax cuts and £140bn in spending commitments in a Reform UK manifesto that economists said did “not add up”.
The Conservative party, which has struggled to counter the growing Reform threat, accused Farage of being part of a “great entertainment machine” who was not somebody who could govern the country.
Hayward Gallery, London From a hut that plays music as if it’s history’s jukebox to a rocket fuelled with sugarcane, the Bahamian makes art freighted with history and peopled by the overlooked and flawed
‘You belong here,” reads the neon sign high on one of the Hayward Gallery’s exterior walls, in a curving handwritten script. But where are we and what does belonging mean? That’s what Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan asks in There Is Light Somewhere, which fills the building. Origins and arrivals, disappearances and sudden returns have a big part to play in Strachan’s art.
Along the way, the artist has walked to the north pole, following Black polar explorer Matthew Henson, and taken a block of arctic ice back to the Bahamas. He has trained as an astronaut in Russia and blasted a sugarcane-fuelled rocket into the stratosphere, as part of a programme to interest young Bahamians in science and technology, and to further whatever dreams they have of escape. Referencing sports and reggae, untold lives, the writings of James Baldwin and Black astronaut Robert Henry Lawrence Jr, Strachan’s art is always encyclopaedic, engrossing, disconcerting and engaging. Neon figures sizzle with life. Writing flares on a black wall. Highly crafted sculptures rise from living fields of rice and sounds fill the air.
Hotel Marysville was renowned for its floating dance floor and once hosted stars such as Babe Ruth and Bing Crosby
An almost century-old historic hotel in northern California that once hosted Babe Ruth and Bing Crosby was destroyed by a fire over the weekend.
Crews responded to Hotel Marysville around 10pm on Saturday night and tried to save the long-vacant 98-year-old inn, but the flames burned away the building’s internal components and left only a “skeleton”, Kyle Heggstrom, the Marysville fire chief, told the Sacramento Bee.
Met police commander Kyle Gordon had been chosen to be force’s new head but will not now be taking up role
A police force has been thrown into “chaos” after its lengthy search for a new chief constable ended in failure.
The Metropolitan police commander Kyle Gordon was chosen to be the new head of the West Mercia force after a recruitment process led by John Campion, the Conservative police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the region.
BMA to lobby next government to change limit, which is one of the highest in Europe
Doctors have called for England’s drink-driving limit to be reduced to the equivalent of a small glass of wine or beer, in a proposal supported by a number of medical and road safety organisations.
England’s legal limit for getting safely behind the wheel is one of the highest in Europe at 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, a law established in 1967.
Labour leader says projected rise in number of children hit by policy is ‘powerful’ reason to ditch it but refuses to set timeline
Keir Starmer has said he is “not immune” to the powerful argument for scrapping the two-child benefit cap, after experts said the number of children affected by it would rise by a third in the next five years.
The Labour leader refused to set out a timeline for when he would scrap the policy, despite previously saying he would ditch it if he could.
Piece by piece the gilt is flaking off what is left of Belgium’s golden generation. An abundance of talent, sometimes functioning, sometimes not, but a team without cohesion or an abiding idea, they were picked off by an unheralded Slovakia side who had everything their lustrous opponents did not. But boy, a fair amount happened along the way.
An unerring finish by Ivan Schranz after a defensive aberration was the decisive moment in the match and it came after just six minutes.
Jens Stoltenberg accused of ‘escalation of tension’ as he warns of growing threat from Russia and China
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has indicated that the military alliance is considering whether to increase the number of available nuclear weapons, triggering warnings from experts about the possibility of a new arms race.
Stoltenberg said Nato could, for the first time, face a significant nuclear threat from two fronts – Russia and China – and that it may be necessary to increase the number of deployable warheads as a deterrent.
University hires Brunswick Group amid anger from campus organizers at its sustainability school’s funding
Stanford University’s sustainability school has hired a public relations firm to address “potential reputational challenges” amid concern from campus activists over the institution’s extensive ties with fossil fuel companies.
However, that PR firm, the Brunswick Group, has itself faced criticism for working with oil and gas companies, disappointing the university’s climate advocates. Brunswick says it is “vital to engage with companies in the most complex sectors to decarbonize”.
German prosecutors have announced the seizure of cocaine worth €2.6bn (£2.2bn) from several container ships and the arrest of seven people in what they called the biggest ever cocaine find in the country.
Prosecutors in the western city of Düsseldorf said on Monday that they confiscated the 35.5 tonnes of cocaine last year after a tipoff from Colombian authorities. They found 25 tonnes of cocaine at the port in the northern city of Hamburg, another 8 tonnes in the Dutch port of Rotterdam and almost 3 tonnes in Colombia. The drugs were hidden among vegetables and fruit.
Police not looking for anyone else over death of Dora and Peter Leese, whose bodies were found at their home in April
An elderly couple found dead with gunshots wounds at their Staffordshire bungalow were “devoted” to each other, a neighbour has said.
Dora Leese, 77, was found with gunshot wounds to her chest at their home in Meir Park, Staffordshire, next to her husband, Peter, 78, who also had gunshot wounds, on 20 April.
On the front row Paul Mescal wore a striped cotton pair that at first glance could have been mistaken for boxers
Gird your loins. The main missive from the Gucci menswear show in Milan on Monday afternoon was that short shorts are sliding up the style charts for summer. Out of 46 of the looks shown, 41 featured shorts hovering around the 3in and 5in inseam mark. One model’s look even consisted of just a pair of slick leather shorts in Gucci’s signature “Ancora Rosso” oxblood colour. On the front row, the Irish actor Paul Mescal added to the mood wearing a softly striped cotton pair from the brand that at first glance could have been mistaken for boxers.
While Mescal was named an official ambassador for the Italian brand last October, he has also become the unofficial face/legs of the short shorts trend. He was one of the first to thrust micro shorts into the spotlight when he was pictured circa 2020 in a pair from his local GAA team (Gaelic Athletic Association), an Irish sporting organisation that Mescal previously played football for. Since then “thigh guy summer” has become a popular hashtag on social media and now Gucci has elevated the trend to high fashion.
The UK can’t continue with policies that have produced a productivity slump and record amounts of insecure work
In the manifestos of both the Conservative and the Labour parties, there is a commitment to implementing the NHS long-term workforce plan to ensure that the country will be able to populate the health service with UK-trained doctors and nurses. However, neither of the parties are suggesting that they will fund the £30bn it would cost to employ the tens of thousands of staff they say they will train. Instead, voters are expected to believe that the confidence fairy will turn up when the next government arrives – and businesses will invest, leading to economic growth.
It is magical thinking to believe that, without actually doing anything, private spending in Britain will be stimulated to such an extent that it will more than compensate for the anticipated public sector cuts that depress it.
The gulf between rhetoric and reality on policing and justice is harmful and needs to be closed
The conviction last week of two 12-year-old boys for the murder of a 19-year-old, Shawn Seesahai, with whom they had an altercation in Wolverhampton, has pushed the subject of knife crime up the agenda in the middle of the general election campaign. The pair are the youngest people convicted of murder in the UK for more than 30 years, and a senior investigating officer described his shock at learning their ages.
Typically, rightwing parties place more emphasis on law and order. But tackling crime was not one of Rishi Sunak’s five pledges. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party, by contrast, has made “Take back our streets” one of the five “missions” in its manifesto.
Nige isn’t here to sell his fantasies, all he’s really selling is himself – along with disaffection and division
“What the fuck are you doing here?” says the cab driver. Fair to say he doesn’t get that many pickups from the Gurnos estate on the edge of Merthyr Tydfil. “It’s fucking rough round here. Everyone’s fucking mental.”
Say what you like about Nigel Farage but he gets to parts of the country that other politicians don’t. You wouldn’t have caught the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems launching their manifestos on a rundown estate in Wales.
Colonel Edward Thomas Ryan, who died at age 85, will be buried next to his life partner Paul Cavagnaro
A US military veteran who died earlier this month came out as gay in an obituary published after his death.
The obituary in the Albany Times-Union tells the story of Colonel Edward Thomas Ryan, a decorated army officer who served in the Vietnam war and was also a fireman in his hometown, Rensselaer, New York. He died on 1 June at the age 85.
Kylian Mbappé and Marion Bartoli among athletes criticised by rightwing politicians for intervening
More than 200 French athletes and sporting personalities have signed an open letter calling on voters to reject the far right in the snap parliamentary election called by Emmanuel Macron, describing it as “not only … a civic duty, but also an act of love for our country”.
As the official election campaign kicked off with just two weeks to go before the first round of voting, the appeal called for “a more inclusive and democratic society” and accused rightwing politicians of exploiting differences and diversity and “manipulating our fears to divide us”.
Nigel Farage has launched Reform UK’s ‘contract’ with voters, which he insists is not a manifesto. Archie Bland reports on its content and whether it adds up
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