All The News

on 2024.11.21 at 05:52:05 in London

News
Russia and US battle for advantage in Ukraine war ahead of Trump's return
Deadly Israeli air strikes hit Gaza - reports
Are celebrities workers? South Korea says no
Las Vegas man who called 911 for help killed by police in his home
FBI charges man with alleged plot to bomb New York Stock Exchange
US charges Indian billionaire with fraud
Australia wants to ban kids from social media. Will it work?
The model, British tech and Russia's war machine
House speaker backs transgender bathroom restrictions on Capitol Hill
Deadly bomb cyclone cuts power for thousands in US north-west
Texas offers Trump land for migrant 'deportation facilities'
US nursing student Laken Riley's killer guilty of murder
Is nuclear power gaining new energy?
Rust premieres at low-key film festival three years after shooting
What are the Storm Shadow missiles Ukraine has fired into Russia?
Al Fayed abuse ‘could be on scale of Savile’, says survivors’ advocate
Ukraine front could 'collapse' as Russia gains accelerate, experts warn
Trump voters shrug off cabinet pick controversies
Putin gifts lion and brown bears to North Korea zoo
Liam Payne's funeral to be held on Wednesday
Vatican in row at climate talks over gender rights
Anti-landmine groups criticise US for sending mines to Ukraine
Man who drugged wife in French mass rape case told: You'll die alone
Fourth tourist dies in suspected alcohol poisoning in Laos
Death penalty for Thai woman accused of murdering 14 friends with cyanide

Business
Archegos founder sentenced to 18 years in prison
Logan Paul accused of misleading fans over crypto investments
Uncertainty after Australia foreign students bill hits opposition
Ford cuts 800 jobs claiming weak demand for electric cars
Megaport opens up Latin America to Chinese trade as US looks on
'The nicest place on the internet': How an Australian business is trying to transform mental health at work
Palestinian olive harvest under threat from Israeli attacks and restrictions
Trump selects financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary
TV networks MSNBC and CNBC to be spun off by Comcast
Women plan UK legal action over talc cancer claims
Jaguar unveils new logo ahead of electric relaunch
What the farmers' protest tells us about their argument with the government
Thousands of postal workers in Canada strike over wages
Google reacts angrily to report it will have to sell Chrome
Popular weight-loss drug Wegovy goes on sale in China
Chocolate makers stoke boom for Indian cocoa beans
Seven-year-old gets job offer from Russian IT firm
British Airways says 'tech issue' resolved after delays
German manufacturers warn of the sector's 'formidable crash'
Spirit Airlines files for bankruptcy protection

Innovation
Atlas of cells transforms understanding of human body
Social media ban for under-16s 'on the table' in UK
Long Fatigue: The exhaustion that lingers after an infection
'God's influencer' to be made first millennial saint in April
Is SpaceX's Starship the loudest ever rocket?
How robotaxis are trying to win passengers' trust
Stressed? Writing down a to-do list might help
Are there health benefits to eating turmeric and other spices?
Why coffee could be good for your health
How online photos and videos alter the way you think
Daylight savings: What happens to baby sleep when the clocks change
Animal robots give Gravesend a taste of the future
AI cameras catch drivers on phone or without belts
Instagram testing tool that resets all recommended posts
Roblox to ban young children from messaging others
Digital hub opens to train teachers in new tech
The world put the brakes on nuclear weapons. Is it time to do the same with fossil fuels?
Students' space challenge inspired by local delicacy
'I may not be human but I sing from my soul' - AI divides African musicians

Culture
Son of IRA murder victim calls Disney drama 'horrendous'
The Sidemen: We've hit YouTube limit so are moving to Netflix
Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role
The hidden meanings in a 16th-Century female nude
Chappell Roan and Ezra Collective on BBC Sound of 2025 list
The charges against Sean 'Diddy' Combs explained
Diddy called witnesses from prison, prosecutors say
Zoe Ball quits Radio 2 Breakfast, Scott Mills taking over
Barry McGuigan opens up about death of daughter on I'm a Celebrity
Wicked to Gladiator II: 12 of the best films to watch this November
11 of the best TV shows to watch this November
Wag the Dog to All the President's Men: 10 of the best films about US presidential elections
Wicked review: This 'drawn-out' and 'self-important' film proves the musical didn't need to be split into two parts
'I just felt desperate to do something': Jennifer Lawrence and Malala on their film about the Afghan women fighting back
'I have been deceiving you… I'm sorry about that': The British politician who was caught faking his own death
Ten key items in our wardrobe is enough – here's why
'The film is more optimistic than people consider': Why the poignant Kes is Britain's greatest coming-of-age story
How everyday clothing is becoming more luxurious
'That was the greatest day of all our lives': The migrants who passed through Ellis Island
'It's rather different from selling an ordinary book': How Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned – and became a bestseller
'It was a much more interesting character': How Arnold Schwarzenegger became the bad guy in The Terminator
'A social commentary about what was really going on': How Easy Rider revolutionised Hollywood
'We almost didn't do it because it was too dirty': Doris Day and Rock Hudson on Pillow Talk, the risqué romcom
'It is a kind of marriage': When Denmark held the first ever same-sex civil unions
James Bond theme tune guitarist Vic Flick dies
Steps to take supermarket musical on tour
Tulisa says she's demisexual - here's what it means
Tickets on sale for music festival in abbey ruins
Ed Sheeran surprises pupils at music careers event
'Manifest': Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year
Diddy faces more than two dozen lawsuits as he sits in jail

Arts
These five bizarre Surrealist artworks are not what they seem
AI artwork of Alan Turing sells for $1m
The bear who was a private in the Polish army
AI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement?
Michelangelo's David and 10 artworks that caused a scandal
The rare blue the Maya invented
The colour that means both life and death
The shady past of the colour pink
The toxic colour that comes from volcanoes
The mysterious painting that changed how we see colour
The insect that painted Europe red
'An unmistakable stab at the USSR': Could Amadeus be the most misunderstood Oscar winner ever?
Paul McCartney's missing bass and other mysterious musical instrument disappearances
How opera is aiming for net zero amid worsening climate change
Antonio Pappano: How opera can be 'open to everyone'
Bryn Terfel: The nation that is the 'land of song'
Gen Z and young millennials' surprising obsession
'Proper piece of Bristol history' up for auction
How art saved actor from 'paralysing' depression
New theatre and concert venue moves step closer
The transgender bus driver in 1970s Belfast
London becomes Emerald City for Wicked premiere
'Art helps me deal with my cancer diagnosis'
Historic barracks to host 'living parade'
Silent auction marks art charity's 40th birthday

Travel
The quaint English town where the US' future was planned
Five countries helping you reconnect you with your roots
How railroads inspired the creation of time zones
'I bought a helicopter for people to sleep in'
Why did one million more tourists visit Teesside?
Mountain Road closures for resurfacing works
Seafront Ferris wheel to stay until 2027
A day out with Bluey: Australia's new experience brings the Heeler family to life
A 'crazy town looking to go fossil free': Sweden's wooden city that was green before Greta
The 900km Amazon highway that's dividing a nation
A unique way to see a hidden side of Venice
A 210km drive through 'the most beautiful place on Earth'
Nordhavn: The Danish 'city' that's been designed for an easy life
Eight of the world's most extraordinary tiny hotel rooms
Five of Montreal's best poutine spots - according to a local chef
A two-Michelin-star chef's guide to the best dining spots in Istanbul
A dancer's guide to Seville's best flamenco experiences
A Oaxacan chef's guide to the best of Oaxaca City's street food
A Scotch whisky lover's guide to Edinburgh and beyond
F1 driver Sergio Pérez's guide to a weekend in Mexico City
An Irish banjo virtuoso's guide to the best traditional Irish music experiences in Galway
Gabriel Luna's weekend guide to Austin, Texas
Booking your next holiday? Consider these six trailblazing travel firms making the world a better place
The world's adventure capital's massive gamble
Kamikochi: Japan's car-free town that autumn hikers love
'It was a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea': The US homes made from waste materials
How to prepare an Indigenous holiday meal
Is the future of French cheese at stake?
Kamayan feasts: The 'hands-only' meals that bring Filipinos together
The mystery of one of Italy's most iconic pastas
'Set-jetting': How on-screen locations are becoming travel destinations
The spectacular dance contest that brings nations together
Europe wants you to travel by train. But why is it so complex and expensive?
An epic croissant that's the star of a Polish parade
A journey 400,000 years back in human history
The changing face of Mongolia
The curious appeal of haunted hotels
Is Ireland's County Meath the true birthplace of Halloween?
Five of the most haunted places in Britain

Earth
Atmospheric Rivers: Inside the giant 'sky rivers' swelling with climate change
Why a wildlife trust needs funds to restore land
Wind farm plans are progressing, deputy says
GB Energy could bring 300 jobs to Aberdeen - boss
Oysters as large as cheese plates: How New Yorkers are reclaiming their harbour's heritage
'A bullet train for power': China's ultra-high-voltage electricity grid
'Out of sync': The trillion-dollar climate puzzle that's become a diplomatic nightmare
'The sixth great extinction is happening', conservation expert warns
The 'precariously balanced boulders' that offer a window into seismic history
'People collect spiders like Pokemon': Why the illegal tarantula trade is booming
COP29 hosts accused of detaining climate defenders
UN climate talks 'no longer fit for purpose' say key experts
What if polluters footed the climate bill?
The mountaineers and hikers collecting data in extreme environments that scientists can't reach


Russia and US battle for advantage in Ukraine war ahead of Trump's return

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jyvv1l99wo, today

In a matter of days US President Joe Biden's administration and Russia have made separate - but significant - moves aimed at influencing the outcome of the war in Ukraine, two months ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

There is a sense of Moscow maximising its gains and of Biden abandoning long-held red lines before Trump seeks to deliver on his claim to end the war in 24 hours.

Ukraine has already acted on Biden’s decision to let Kyiv fire first long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory. As Kyiv struggles to hold on to its territory in the east, Biden has promised to send anti-personnel landmines, too.

What prompted Biden’s change of heart appears to have been the arrival of thousands of North Koreans deployed to the front line, which the US sees as a “massive escalation”.

But Russia's President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the tension still further by loosening the conditions of use for Russia’s nuclear weapons. That “effectively eliminates” defeat on the battlefield, claims Moscow.

One Russia commentator suggested Putin might view the current situation as an “in-between” moment that gives him the sense he has the upper hand in Ukraine.

At the start of this week, Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine for almost three months. Amid fears of a renewed strike on Wednesday, several Western embassies closed their doors.

"It’s all connected," says Mykhaylo Samus, head of the New Geopolitics Research Network in Ukraine. He argues Russia has been stockpiling hundreds of Iskander and Kinzhal missiles for weeks to enable it to carry out strikes and thus send a psychological message ahead of the transfer of power in Washington DC.

Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, may have been spared on Wednesday, but the message got through.

“Everything is about preparing for a strong position for talks with Trump, to understand Russia is not going to make compromise and everything depends on [Ukraine's President Volodymyr] Zelensky.”

“There’s clearly an effort ahead of Trump to maximise their standings,” agrees Jade McGlynn, from the war studies department at King’s College London. She is highly sceptical that a deal with Vladimir Putin is possible - and that ultimately his aim is to subjugate Russia’s southern neighbour.

Ukraine marked 1,000 days since Russia's full-scale invasion on Tuesday with Russian forces waging relentless attacks in a bid to seize key hubs in the east of Ukraine.

The mood in Moscow appears to be that it is only a matter of time before Ukraine is in its hands, says Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

From January, however, Putin will have to consider other factors, she says: “He will have to deal with the fact that Trump now is responsible for the situation. If Putin escalates, it can worsen the chances for a deal. He will have to be more flexible, more open to different options.”

Biden’s decision to allow Kyiv to begin firing ATACMS into Russian territory was clearly directed at helping Kyiv, but it was felt by the Trump entourage, too.

Although Trump has so far said nothing, his pick for National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, spoke of “another step up the escalation ladder and nobody knows where this is going”.

He did not go as far as some on the Trump team. Donald Trump Jr complained Biden was trying to “get World War Three” going before his father could even return to the White House.

"There's one president at a time," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller "When the next president takes office, he can make his own decisions.”

Some Republicans have backed Biden’s move, although Sen Lindsay Graham said he should have done it “to help Ukraine and he’s playing politics with it”.

Russia’s reaction may or may not be an empty threat.

Under its revised nuclear doctrine, Moscow will now be able to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries that are backed by nuclear powers, and if it comes under “massive” air attack, too.

Alexander Ermakov from the Russian International Affairs Council says the change is not so much as an operational manual for using nuclear weapons, but “primarily it serves as a declaration to potential adversaries, outlining the scenarios in which such measures could be considered”.

Another message from Putin to the West, then.

Tatiana Stanovaya believes it is not that he wants to start World War Three, but because “he believes he must scare the Western elites to show they are playing with fire”.

What happens beyond January is anyone's guess.

Kremlin insiders have already begun briefing about their minimal demands from any Trump initiative to end the war, and Volodymyr Zelensky has begun making his position clear too.

Asked in a US TV interview what would happen to Ukraine if Washington slashed military aid, he was clear: "If they will cut, I think we will lose. Of course, anyway, we will stay and we will fight. We have production, but it’s not enough to prevail."

Putin insists Ukraine will have to remain neutral for any relations to work, even though it is now part of Ukraine’s constitution to join both Nato and the European Union.

A Reuters news agency report on Wednesday cited Russian officials saying Putin might be open to pulling out from relatively small patches of territory but nothing bigger.

Zelensky on Tuesday presented his 10-point “resilience plan” to parliament, and one defiant message rang out in the Verkhovna Rada more than most.

“Maybe Ukraine will have to outlive someone in Moscow in order to achieve all its goals... to restore the full integrity of Ukraine.”

One day Russia would be without Putin, in other words, but Ukraine would be going nowhere.

For Ukrainians that wait could take years, says Mykhaylo Samus, but they would never consent to abandoning Crimea or any other territory under Russian occupation.

The most Zelensky might be prepared to sign would be a ceasefire without commitments, he believes. Anything else would lead to internal conflict as many would view it as a betrayal.

Ahead of any talks Mykola Bielieskov of the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv believes the key is to prevent any major Russian breakthrough in the east.

“For us it’s just necessary to localise [Russian] advances… using Atacms, anti-personnel landmines or whatever. Because if the Russians are successful they would try to dictate terms.”

Speaking to the BBC from Kharkiv, Jade McGlynn said few Ukrainians believed Trump would be able to engineer any kind of lasting peace deal.

Any kind of settlement that left Ukraine in a much worse position would lead to political chaos, she said.

“Europe needs to step up,” she said, “and ultimately we know that the Scandinavians, Baltic states and Poland are not enough.”


Deadly Israeli air strikes hit Gaza - reports

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7zyr8p15o, today

Hospital officials in northern Gaza say many people have been killed in overnight Israeli air strikes.

Gazan rescue teams say search operations began early in the morning after Israel bombed at least five buildings in Beit Lahia and Gaza City.

Hamas-aligned media say dozens of people were killed and many are still buried in the rubble - including women and children.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. It has recently intensified its offensive in northern Gaza, saying it is stopping Hamas from regrouping.

Parts of northern Gaza are under Israeli siege and virtually no humanitarian aid has been delivered in 40 days, the UN warned earlier.

Gazan medics say they are struggling to treat the injured, with aid agencies saying they cannot get essential supplies into the area.

Earlier this week, at least 34 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a five-storey residential block in Beit Lahia, the local civil defence agency said.

The agency, quoted by AFP news agency, said many of the dead were women and children.

Israel's ground offensive in northern Gaza has displaced up to 130,000 people over the past five weeks.

The UN says 75,000 people remain under siege with dwindling supplies of water and food in the towns of Beit Lahia, Jabalia and Beit Hanoun.

Last week's report by Human Rights Watch said Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by deliberately causing the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.

About 1.9 million people - 90% of Gaza’s population - have fled their homes over the past year, and 79% of the territory is under Israeli-issued evacuation orders, according to the UN.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Nearly 44,000 people have been killed and more than 104,000 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

On Wednesday, the US blocked a Gaza ceasefire draft resolution at the UN Security Council - the fourth time it has used its veto power during the conflict to shield its ally, Israel.

Fourteen of the 15 council members voted in favour of the draft, which demanded that the war in Gaza "must end immediately, unconditionally and permanently and all remaining hostages must be immediately and unconditionally released".

Deputy US ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said the document "abandoned" the necessity for there to be "a linkage between a ceasefire and the release of hostages".

Wood said the proposed resolution would have sent a "dangerous message" to Hamas.

In a separate development, US mediator Amos Hochstein has arrived in Israel from Beirut.

He has said that he sees a "real opportunity" to end the conflict in Lebanon after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah largely agreed to a US ceasefire proposal.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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Are celebrities workers? South Korea says no

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jyvmew0njo, today

They've sold more albums than any other K-pop girl band last year, have tens of millions of fans worldwide and are arguably one of South Korea's hottest acts.

What the members of NewJeans aren't however, are workers, according to the government.

The country's Ministry of Employment and Labor on Wednesday dismissed claims of workplace harrassment against a member of the group, saying celebrities were not seen as workers under the country's labour law - and were therefore not entitled to the same rights.

The decision has drawn its fair share of scorn - and unsurprise - with some saying it is just the latest to come from an industry known for its punishing schedules and intense competition.

This is the latest scandal to hit NewJeans, which has for months been embroiled in a public feud with its record label, Ador.

With slick pop songs like Super Shy, OMG and Supernatural, NewJeans were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, and were nominated for best group at this year's MTV Awards.

Formed by label Ador in 2022, the group has five members - Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein - whose ages range from 16 to 20.

The incident started after 20-year-old Hanni and the other four members of the band raised concerns about their treatment by Ador during an impromptu YouTube livestream on 11 September.

In the band's YouTube video, which has since been deleted, they made claims of workplace harassment, among others, which culminated in Hanni saying she would testify in a hearing about bullying in the music industry.

The Vietnamese-Australian singer, whose real name is Pham Ngoc Han, told lawmakers that she felt "the company hated us".

She described how senior members of Hybe ignored her and her bandmates, and gave them cold shoulder. She also alleged that employees of the agency bad-mouthed NewJeans on internal communication app and asked a journalist to downplay the group's record sales in one article.

Hybe had previously denied the accusations. The CEO of Ador, which is a subsidiary of Hybe, said at the hearing that she would "listen more closely" to her artists.

Her allegations prompted fans to file a petition about workplace bullying to the government.

But on Wednesday, South Korea's labour ministry rejected these claims, saying given the content and nature of the management contract signed by Hanni, she is not regarded as a worker under the country's Labour Standards Act.

"Individuals must meet the criteria under the Labour Standards Act... to be considered workers. This includes having fixed working hours and providing labour under the employer’s direct supervision and control. Celebrities, including singers, are typically classified as independent contractors," Chunghwan Choi, senior partner of Yulchon law firm in Seoul explained.

The government also cites the nature of Hanni's income, which is deemed to be "profit sharing, rather than wages", according to local reports, adding that she pays business income tax rather than employment income tax.

One expert has called the response "utterly unfair and yet unsurprising".

The work for K-pop idols is "emotionally and physically exhausting", according to her, as they work "incredibly long hours, often seven days a week for months in a row...[with] no clearly defined periods of rest", says CedarBough Saeji, Assistant Professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at Pusan National University in South Korea.

"Exploitation of the workers is accepted because they are not regular employees and there is no labour union, or clearly we can now see, no governmental agency to advocate for humane working conditions for them," she argues.

There are currently no specific laws in South Korea that provide protections for the working rights of celebrities or artists, says Mr Choi, saying that this "underscores the urgent need for reforms to address longstanding issues in the entertainment industry".

One measure that could be put into place to safeguard the working rights of artists is something similar to the Talent Agency Act in Hollywood, which requires talent agencies to obtain licenses and prohibits unfair or exploitative contracts, adds Mr Choi.

However, he adds that "while there have been discussions about implementing laws similar to the Talent Agency Act, no such legislation has been enacted yet".

'Idols are Workers'

On Wednesday, New Jeans fans rallied under the hashtag "IdolsAreWorkers" in support of the band.

Others pointed out that the decision had a legal basis, as celebrities were not technically seen as workers under the law, but called for greater reforms in the industry.

"I get what they're saying about the role not qualifying for the legal defintion of workplace harrassment, but this just shows the need for reform in the K-pop industry", said one user on X.

Hanni has yet to comment on the government's decision.

Hybe, which represents massive K-pop groups such as BTS and Seventeen, is South Korea's largest music firm.

South Korea’s entertainment industry is known for its high-pressure environment, where celebrities are held to strict standards over their appearances and behaviour.


Las Vegas man who called 911 for help killed by police in his home

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckglp4nz75zo, today

A 43-year-old father was fatally shot by police in Las Vegas after he called 911 for help while fighting off an intruder in his home.

The family of Brandon Durham, including his 15-year-old daughter who was hiding in a nearby room when her father was killed, have asked for the officer to be fired.

Mr Durham's teenage daughter said she was "disgusted" with Las Vegas police as they treated him like "the suspect" not "the victim".

A lawyer for Alexander Bookman, the officer who shot Mr Durham, said he committed no crimes.


FBI charges man with alleged plot to bomb New York Stock Exchange

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg57pjp48d2o, today

A Florida man has been arrested and charged with plotting to set off a bomb at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), according to court documents.

Harun Abdul-Malik Yener is accused of attempting to use an explosive device to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce, according the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.

According to the FBI, he allegedly recorded himself saying "I feel like [Osama] Bin Laden" - a reference to the former al-Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Federal officials began investigating him in February after receiving a tip that he was keeping bomb-making supplies inside an unlocked storage unit.

Agents searched the facility in Coral Springs and said they discovered “bombmaking sketches, numerous watches with timers, electronic circuit boards and other electronics”, court documents said.

A federal public defender in the Southern District of Florida who has been assigned to represent Mr Yener did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the documents, investigators said Mr Yener allegedly told an undercover agent last week that he planned to carry out the attack the week before the Thanksgiving holiday, which takes place on 28 November.

“That would be a great hit,” Mr Yener allegedly told an agent, saying the attack in lower Manhattan would be "hella easy".

He also allegedly conducted numerous internet searches for how to build bombs, and told agents he planned to wear a disguise during the attack and release a recorded message to the media.

Investigators said Mr Yener's alleged "motivation for bombing the NYSE was to attain a 'reboot' and/or 'reset' of the United States government".

Mr Yener is said to have told undercover agents that the explosion would be ‘like a small nuke went off’ and that '[a]nything outside' the building ‘will be wiped out’ and ‘anything inside there would be killed'."

He allegedly maintained a YouTube channel with videos describing how to make explosives from household items.

Mr Yener, a resident of southern Florida, is homeless, according to court documents.

He appeared in court on Wednesday for the first time and will be detained while he waits for his trial, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The arrest is the latest in the last few months involving US national security.

In October, a man from Afghanistan was arrested for allegedly planning an attack to coincide with election day, which took place earlier this month.

And in August, a Pakistani man was arrested for allegedly plotting to murder US officials on behalf of Iran.


US charges Indian billionaire with fraud

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78dkgm9e7ro, today

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has been charged with fraud in the US, which has accused him of orchestrating a $250m (£198m) bribery scheme and concealing it to raise money in the US.

The criminal charges, filed on Wednesday in New York, are the latest blow to 62-year-old Mr Adani, one of India's richest men, whose business empire extends from ports and airports to renewable energy.

In the indictment, prosecutors alleged the tycoon and other senior executives had agreed to the payments to Indian officials to win contracts for his renewable energy company expected to yield more than $2bn in profits over 20 years.

The Adani Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The conglomerate has been operating under a cloud in the US since 2023, when a high-profile company published a report accusing it of fraud. The claims, which Mr Adani denied, prompted a major market sell-off.

Reports of this bribery probe have been circling for months. Prosecutors said the US started investigating the company in 2022, and found the inquiry obstructed.

They allege that executives raised $3bn in loans and bonds, including from US firms, on the backs of false and misleading statements related to the firm's anti-bribery practices and policies, as well as reports of the bribery probe.

“As alleged, the defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and... lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement announcing the charges.

“My office is committed to rooting out corruption in the international marketplace and protecting investors from those who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of our financial markets,” he added.

On several occasions Mr Adani met personally with government officials to advance the bribery scheme, officials said.

Mr Adani is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has long faced claims from opposition politicians alleging that he has benefited from his political ties, which he denies.

The US Attorney positions in the US are appointed by the president. The filing comes just weeks after Donald Trump won election to the White House, pledging to overhaul the US Justice Department.

Last week on social media, Mr Adani congratulated Trump on his election win and pledged to invest $10bn in the US.


Australia wants to ban kids from social media. Will it work?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgl4dyjg57do, today

“I felt really scared to be honest,” says James, describing an incident on Snapchat that left him questioning whether it was safe to go to school.

The Australian boy, 12, had had a disagreement with a friend, and one night before bed the boy added him to a group chat with two older teenagers.

Almost instantly, his phone “started blowing up” with a string of violent messages.

“One of them sounded like he was probably 17,” James tells the BBC. “He sent me videos of him with a machete… he was waving it around. Then there were voice messages saying that they were going to catch me and stab me.”

James - not his real name - first joined Snapchat when he was 10, after a classmate suggested everyone in their friendship group get the app. But after telling his parents about his cyberbullying experience, which was ultimately resolved by his school, James deleted his account.

His experience is a cautionary tale that shows why the Australian government’s proposed social media ban on children under 16 is necessary, says his mother Emma, who is also using a pseudonym.

The laws, which were tabled in parliament's lower house on Thursday, have been billed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as “world-leading”.

But while many parents have applauded the move, some experts have questioned whether kids should - or even can - be barred from accessing social media, and what the adverse effects of doing so may be.

What is Australia proposing?

Albanese says the ban - which will cover platforms such as X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram - is about protecting kids from the “harms” of social media.

"This one is for the mums and dads... They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online,” he said.

The new legislation provides a "framework" for the ban. But the 17-page document, which is expected to head to the Senate next week, is sparse on detail.

Instead, it will be up to the nation’s internet regulator - the eSafety Commissioner - to hash out how to implement and enforce the rules, which will not come into effect for at least 12 months after legislation is passed.

According to the bill, the ban will apply to all children under 16 and that there will be no exemptions for existing users or those with parental consent.

Tech companies will face penalties of up to A$50m ($32.5m; £25.7) if they do not comply, but there will be exemptions for platforms which are able to create “low-risk services" deemed suitable for kids. Criteria for this threshold are yet to be set.

Messaging services and gaming sites, however, will not be restricted, which has prompted questions over how regulators will determine what is and isn’t a social media platform in a fast-moving landscape.

A group representing the interests of tech companies such as Meta, Snapchat and X in Australia has dismissed the ban as “a 20th Century response to 21st Century challenges”.

Such legislation could push kids into “dangerous, unregulated parts of the internet”, Digital Industry Group Inc says - a fear also expressed by some experts.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has acknowledged the gargantuan task her office will face when enforcing the ban, given “technology change is always going to outpace policy”.

“It will always be fluid, and this is why regulators like eSafety have to be nimble,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.

But Ms Inman Grant has also raised concerns about the central idea behind the government’s policy, which is that there’s a causal link between social media and declining mental health.

“I would say that the evidence base is not settled at all,” she said, pointing to research from her own office which found that some of the most vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQ+ or First Nations teenagers, “feel more themselves online than they do in the real world”.

This is a sentiment echoed by Lucas Lane, 15, who runs an online business selling nail polish to boys. “This [ban] destroys… my friendships and the ability to make people feel seen,” the Perth teenager tells the BBC.

Ms Inman Grant would rather see tech companies clean up their platforms, as well as more investment in education tools to help young people stay safe online. She uses the analogy of teaching children to swim, rather than banning them from the water.

“We don’t fence the ocean… but we do create protected swimming environments that provide safeguards and teach important lessons from a young age,” she told parliament earlier this year.

But parents like Emma see it differently.

“Should we really be wasting our time trying to help kids navigate these difficult systems when tech companies just want them on them all the time?" she says.

“Or should we just allow them to be kids and learn how to be sociable outside with each other, and then start these discussions later on?”

Amy Friedlander, a mother of three from the Wait Mate movement - which encourages parents to delay giving their kids smartphones - agrees.

“We can’t ignore all the positives that technology has brought into our lives. There are huge upsides, but what we haven’t really considered is the impact it is having on brains which aren’t ready for it.”

'Too blunt an instrument'

Over 100 Australian academics have criticised the ban as "too blunt an instrument" and argued that it goes against UN advice which calls on governments to ensure young people have “safe access” to digital environments.

It has also failed to win the backing of a bipartisan parliamentary committee that’s been examining the impact of social media on adolescents. Instead, the committee recommended that tech giants face tougher regulations.

To address some of those concerns, the government says it will eventually introduce "digital duty of care" laws, which will make it a legal obligation for tech companies to prioritise user safety.

Joanne Orlando, a researcher in digital behaviour, argues that while a ban “could be part of a strategy, it absolutely can’t be the whole strategy”.

She says “the biggest piece of the puzzle” should be educating kids to think critically about the content they see on their feeds and how they use social media.

The government has already spent A$6m since 2022 to develop free “digital literacy tools” to try and do just that. However, research suggests that many young Australians aren’t receiving regular lessons.

Ms Orlando and other experts warn there are also significant hurdles to making the age-verification technology - which is required to enforce the ban - effective and safe, given the “enormous risks” associated with potentially housing the identification documents of every Australian online.

The government has said it is aiming to solve that challenge through age-verification trials, and hopes to table a report by mid-next year. It has promised that privacy concerns will be front and centre, but offered little detail on what kind of technology will actually be tested.

In its advice, the eSafety Commissioner has floated the idea of using a third-party service to anonymise a user’s ID before it is passed on to any age verification sites, to “preserve” their privacy.

However, Ms Orlando remains sceptical. “I can’t think of any technology that exists at this point that can pull this off,” she tells the BBC.

Will Australia succeed?

Australia is by no means the first country to try to restrict how young people access certain websites or platforms online.

In 2011, South Korea passed its “shutdown law” which prevented children under 16 from playing internet games between 22:30 and 6:00, but the rules - which faced backlash - were later scrapped citing the need to “respect the rights of youths”.

More recently France introduced legislation requiring social media platforms to block access to children under 15 without parental consent. Research indicated almost half of users were able to circumvent the ban using a simple VPN.

A law in the US state of Utah - which was similar to Australia’s - ran into a different issue: it was blocked by a federal judge who found it unconstitutional.

Albanese has conceded that Australia's proposal may not be foolproof, and if it passes the parliament, it would be subject to a review.

"We know that technology moves fast. No government is going to be able to protect every child from every threat - but we have to do all we can," he said when announcing the measure.

But for parents like Emma and Ms Friedlander - who have lobbied for the changes - it's the message that the ban sends which matters most.

“For too long parents have had this impossible choice between giving in and getting their child an addictive device or seeing their child isolated and feeling left out socially,” Ms Friedlander says.

“We’ve been trapped in a norm that no one wants to be a part of.”

James says that since quitting Snapchat he’s found himself spending more time outside with friends.

And he hopes that the new laws could enable more kids like him to “get out and do the things they love” instead of feeling pressured to be online.


The model, British tech and Russia's war machine

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4vzlx1350o, today

High-tech equipment made by a UK firm worth $2.1m (£1.6m) has been sold to companies in Russia connected to the military, customs documents seen by BBC News suggest.

The documents indicate the British-made camera lenses were shipped by a company registered in Kyrgyzstan, apparently run by a swimwear model.

The UK manufacturer, Beck Optronic Solutions, which has worked on British Challenger 2 tanks and F35 fighter jets, told us it had not breached sanctions, had no dealings with Russia or Kyrgyzstan, and was unaware of the shipments.

Our investigation raises questions about the effectiveness of sanctions imposed on Russia since the war in Ukraine began.

The trail led us to Valeria Baigascina, a 25-year-old, originally from the central Asian state of Kazakhstan but now living in Belarus. A part-time model, she posts regularly about her jet-set lifestyle on social media. In the past two years she has visited Dubai, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Her social media gave no indication she was also the director of a firm which had channelled millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to sanctioned companies in Russia, as our search of customs documents revealed.

According to Belarusian registration details, Ms Baigascina was the founder and director of a company called Rama Group LLC. Set up in February 2023, it is registered to an address in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan - 2,300 miles (3,713 km) from her home in Belarus.

Both countries are former Soviet states with strong trading links to Russia. Belarus remains Moscow’s strongest ally in Europe.

Trade data shows that since sanctions on Russia were introduced in February 2022, UK exports to Kyrgyzstan have increased by more than 300%. Experts suspect some goods are actually destined for Moscow.

The customs documents obtained by the BBC suggest that Rama Group made two shipments to Moscow of high-end optics that can be used in missiles, tanks and aircraft.

The equipment is listed on the customs form as being made by Beck Optronic Solutions in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. The company manufactures high-precision lenses used in targeting and surveillance systems.

Though some of its lenses are used in healthcare and engineering, Beck’s website details extensive military and defence applications.

The lenses and optical technology sold by Beck Optronics are specifically listed as goods that either cannot be legally exported to Russia, or that need permission from UK authorities before any sale can take place.

The BBC has identified, through customs documents, a total of six shipments of products said to have been made by Beck with a total value of $2.1m (£1.6m) and transferred to Moscow through Rama and another intermediary company, Shisan LLC.

In December 2023 and January 2024, Rama Group made its two shipments to Moscow listing them as “rotating part of camera”. These shipments went to Sol Group, a company based in Smolensk, 200 miles (320km) south-west of Moscow, which has been sanctioned by the US.

It is not clear what international route the goods took - the documents indicate some of the shipments may actually have originated in Thailand.

Shisan LLC, another Kyrgyz company, was responsible for four further shipments of Beck Optronics’ products worth $1.5m (£1.1m).

Two of those shipments involved “short-wave infrared camera lens” and went to the Ural Optical & Mechanical Plant, which makes bomb-aiming equipment and is also sanctioned because of its links to the Russian military.

Rama Group and Shisan share the same address in Bishkek - a modern five-storey block in a prosperous part of the city. However, when we visited we were told Valeria Baigascina was out of the country on a business trip.

We found her number through her social media posts and put our allegations to her.

Ms Baigascina said she was the founder of the company but had sold it in May. She denied the allegations, saying that when she had owned it, “nothing like that was supplied”. She then hung up.

Later, by email, she told us the accusations were “ridiculous” and based on “false information”.

Our research shows that in May this year she sold Rama Group to her best friend, Angelina Zhurenko, who runs a lingerie business in Kazakhstan.

Ms Zhurenko told us: “Trading activities are carried out exclusively within the framework of the current legislation of Kyrgyzstan. The company does not violate any prohibitions. Any other information is false.”

The director of the other intermediary company, Shisan, is listed as Evgeniy Anatolyevich Matveev. We put our allegations to him by email.

He told us that our information was “false” and that he ran “a business supplying exclusively civilian goods manufactured in Asian countries”.

He continued: “This does not contradict the laws of the state in which I work, and has nothing to do with US sanctions, because it is impossible to prohibit free trade in Asian goods available for sale and delivery.”

There’s no evidence that Beck Optronics knew about these shipments or that the final destination of the lenses was Russia.

The company told us it had nothing to do with the shipments: “Beck has not shipped anything contrary to UK export controls or any sanctions applying in the UK. It has had no dealings with any party or company in Russia, Kyrgyzstan or Thailand, was not aware that any shipments might ultimately be destined for any of these destinations and has not shipped anything to these destinations.”

It believes some of the equipment listed wasn’t even made by the company and that customs documents may have been falsified.

But these alleged exports are part of a much bigger picture involving shipments from a number of sources.

Analysis of customs documents by the Washington-based security think tank C4ADS suggest that Shisan completed 373 shipments via Kyrgyzstan to Russia between July and December 2023.

Of these, 288 contained goods that fall under customs codes for “high-priority battlefield items”.

Over the same six-month period, Rama Group completed a total of 1,756 shipments to Russia. Of these, 1,355 were for items on the “high-priority battlefield items” list.

Its most recent shipments, including electronics by US and UK companies, went to a Russian company named Titan-Mikro, which has been subject to US sanctions since May 2023 for operating within Russia’s military sector.

“When they sell this technology to a client who is potentially a Russian end-user, they fully should understand that this is to kill people,” says Olena Tregub from NAKO, Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption organisation.

She warns that the holes in the sanctions regime are costing lives.

“Without those technologies, those weapons would not fly. The brain of those ballistic missiles, the brain of those kamikaze drones, are made of Western technology,” she says.

International authorities are aware of Kyrgyzstan’s role in sanctions evasion.

In April, UK’s foreign secretary at the time, David Cameron, travelled to Bishkek and urged the Kyrgyz authorities to do more to tighten their sanctions' compliance.

The Kyrgyz president expressed confidence that Lord Cameron’s official visit to his country would “give new impetus to multifaceted co-operation between Kyrgyzstan and the UK”.

David O’Sullivan, the EU’s Special Envoy for the Implementation of Sanctions told us that efforts continue to shut down “illicit procurement networks”, and that “companies are required to undertake due diligence checks to understand who is the final end-user and where ‘battlefield items’ end up ultimately”.


House speaker backs transgender bathroom restrictions on Capitol Hill

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2pknez94o, today

US House Speaker Mike Johnson has backed plans to ban transgender women from using female bathrooms on Capitol Hill.

“Women deserve women’s only spaces,” Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday. He said the new rule would be enforceable in the Capitol and in House office buildings.

It comes after his Republican colleague, Representative Nancy Mace, introduced a bill to enact a ban following the election of Sarah McBride, the first-ever openly transgender lawmaker.

In a statement, McBride said she was not elected "to fight about bathrooms".

"I'm here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families," McBride said, adding that she would follow the new regulations from Speaker Johnson, "even if I disagree with them".

"This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn't distracted me," the incoming Democratic representative said.

Many of McBride's fellow Democrats issued sharper rebukes of the change, including Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

"There’s no job I’m afraid to lose if it requires me to degrade anyone," Fetterman wrote on X.

Others have accused Mace of bullying a fellow member of Congress.

"This is your priority, that you want to bully a member of Congress, as opposed to welcoming her to join this body so all of us can work together to get things done and deliver real results for the American people?" Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said.

The new rule will apply to all single-sex facilities in Capitol and House office facilities, including changing rooms and locker rooms. House representatives all have their own bathrooms and unisex bathrooms are available in parts of the Capitol Hill complex.

The House Speaker, Johnson in this case, has control of facilities within the chamber and therefore has the authority to issue the policy surrounding bathrooms.

Mace earlier said the measure was intended to target McBride, telling reporters on Tuesday it was "absolutely and then some" a response to her new colleague.

“This is about women and our right to privacy, our right to safety,” she said. “I’m not going to allow biological men into women’s private spaces."

On Wednesday Mace introduced an additional bill that would bar transgender women from "women's private spaces" across all federal property.

Mace, first elected in 2020, first campaigned as a moderate Republican in a competitive South Carolina district.

In a 2021 article in the Washington Examiner, which is still available on her official website, Mace said she "strongly supports LGBTQ rights and equality".

“No one should be discriminated against," she wrote.

She has faced criticism from the socially conservative wing of her party for her moderation on abortion, and her push to increase contraception access nationwide.

Asked about any contradiction between Mace's present actions and her past statements, her spokeswoman Gabrielle Lipsky reiterated support for the ban and said: "We support gay marriage, voted for the respect for marriage act twice. If you think protecting women is discrimination, you are the problem.”

Over the past two years, Republicans in Washington DC and across state capitols have focused on transgender issues, including seeking to limit access to gender-related surgery for minors and to bar transgender athletes from female-only sports categories.

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump said transgender students should be allowed to use whichever bathroom "they feel is appropriate", but he reversed his stance after facing Republican criticism.

In the last stretch of his most recent campaign, Trump and his fellow Republicans narrowed in on opposing transgender rights, spending $215m (£170m) on related advertising, according to tracking firm AdImpact.


Deadly bomb cyclone cuts power for thousands in US north-west

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdlp5klz77o, today

A storm off the coast of the US north-west and western Canada is pummelling the region - bringing high winds, flooding and snow to over seven million residents living in states along the Pacific Ocean.

The storm has caused widespread power outages and knocked down trees into buildings and roadways.

At least two people in the Seattle, Washington, region have died after trees fell on them in separate incidents, police say. One woman was killed while showering at home, and another was killed in a homeless encampment.

The "bomb cyclone" - as forecasters call it - has been caused by air pressure quickly dropping off the coast, which has rapidly intensified the weather system.

Winds, rain and snow expected through the week

One woman died when a tree fell on a homeless encampment in Lynwood, north of Seattle, according to a social media post from South County Fire Department.

Another woman was killed in Kirkland when a tree fell into her home while she showered, according to the Bellevue Fire Department.

Officials say that upon arriving and confirming that the woman had died, "weather conditions were so dangerous in the vicinity" that they were forced to transport the victim's husband to a safer location.

Two other people were injured in Maple Valley, south of Seattle, after a tree fell on their trailer home.

"It's severe out there. Trees are coming down all over the city, with multiple falling onto homes," Washington's Bellevue Fire Department wrote in a social media post during the storm.

"If you are able, head to the lowest floor you can and stay away from windows. Do not go outside if you can avoid it."

On Wednesday morning, more than 700,000 homes and businesses in Washington were without power, according to Poweroutage.us. The number shrank to around 500,000 later in the day. Around 15,000 customers were experiencing outages in California.

Schools across Washington closed on Wednesday.

Pine needles, leaves and other storm debris covered the streets as the sound of chainsaws rang out in Issaquah, a city famous for salmon hatchery in the foothills of the Cascade mountains.

One man trying to reach his sister's home in Issaquah, outside of Seattle, told BBC News on Wednesday that it looked like a bomb had hit a nearby residential courtyard, which was scattered with felled trees.

In northern California, the US Weather Prediction Center (WPC) said there was a high risk of excessive rainfall and warned of flash flooding and mudslides. The San Francisco Bay is expected to see up to 8in (20cm) of rain.

The storm has also stretched up to Canada, where wind is the primary concern and gusts of up to 100mph (160km/h) have been reported off the coast of Vancouver Island. Around 140,000 customers were without power in British Columbia, according to the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority.

BBC Weather presenter Stav Danaos said damaging gusts would continue to ease on Wednesday, although conditions are expected to remain blustery along the Pacific coast from San Francisco up to Vancouver Island.

And incessant heavy rain is expected throughout Thursday and Friday along much of the coast, as a renewed "atmospheric river" of moisture from the Pacific is driven onshore.

Beyond wind, rain and snow, the storm could also bring flash flooding, rock slides and debris flows, as well as heavy mountain snow, in areas of high elevation. The storm has already led to blizzard conditions through the Cascade range of mountains, which runs through both the US and Canada.

The heavy, wet snow that has fallen on the Cascades and North Rockies will start to thaw towards the end of the week as milder air is ushered in.

This snow melt, combined with further heavy rain, is likely to lead to severe flooding in places from Northern California to Oregon, with a significant risk of landslides as the week ends.

What is a bomb cyclone?

Bomb cyclone is a term given by meteorologists to a storm that appears to intensify rapidly, with its central air pressure dropping to at least 24 millibars in 24 hours.

They are referred to as bomb cyclones due to the explosive power of these storms caused by the rapid fall in pressure.

The storm brings with it an array of weather, ranging from blizzards to severe thunderstorms to heavy precipitation.

These weather events are not unusual for this time of year.

Similar so-called atmospheric river events - when small regions of moisture travel outside tropical regions - have occurred throughout North America over the last few weeks.

But the conditions of an atmospheric river combined with a bomb cyclone can create a major weather event.


Texas offers Trump land for migrant 'deportation facilities'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87xqwd71wzo, today

Texas authorities say they are prepared to offer President-elect Donald Trump 1,400-acres (567 hectares) of land along the US-Mexico border to build detention facilities for undocumented migrants.

In a letter, the Texas General Land Office said the plot could be used to build facilities for "processing, detention, and co-ordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation's history".

Trump has repeatedly pledged to deport millions of undocumented migrants and mobilise the National Guard to help carry this out.

His plan, however, is likely to face enormous financial and logistics hurdles, as well as immediate legal challenges from rights groups.

The letter, published online and sent to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, notes that the owner of the recently purchased land had refused to allow a border wall to be built there and "actively blocked law enforcement" from accessing it.

"Now it's essentially farmland, so it's flat, it's easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention centre on there," Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in an interview with Fox News, which first reported the offer.

The state government in Texas, which launched its own unilateral border security operation after Trump left office, has been broadly supportive of Trump's promises to strengthen the US-Mexico border.

Buckingham said she was "100% on board with the Trump administration's pledge to get these criminals out of our country".

But the Democratic governors of three other southern border states - California, Arizona, and New Mexico - have said they will not aid mass deportations.

What any new detention facilities would look like is unclear, although the incoming "border czar" Tom Homan has suggested they could be "soft-sided".

Facilities currently in use range from soft-sided, camp-like facilities used by Customs and Border Patrol to house undocumented migrants for short periods of time, as well as brick-and-mortar buildings used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

County and state jails are also used, for which local jurisdictions receive compensation from immigration authorities.

Stephen Miller, the top Trump adviser on immigration who has been picked as deputy chief of staff for policy, has previously said the Trump administration would build vast holding facilities to serve as staging centres for mass deportations.

In a late 2023 interview with the New York Times, Miller said that the facilities would likely be built on open land near Texas' border with Mexico.

A 2024 spending bill signed by President Joe Biden allocated $3.4m (£2.69m) for ICE to house as many as 41,500 on any given day.

"If Trump conducts mass deportations, ICE would blow past that number very quickly," Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert from the Washington Office on Latin America told the BBC.

ICE data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found that there were 38,863 immigrant detainees being held as of 2 November.

The largest number - just over 12,000 - are held at facilities located in Texas.

News of Texas' offer to the president-elect comes as Democratic-run cities and states have vowed to not co-operate with Trump's promises of mass deportations.

On Tuesday, for example, Los Angeles' city council passed a "sanctuary city" ordinance to bar using local resources to help federal immigration authorities.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said that the fact that Republican-led states are more likely to co-operate with the Trump administration's immigration goals could create a "patchwork of protections" that differ widely across the country.

"We might see the divide between red and blue states widen," she said.

Ms Bush-Joseph added that additional facilities in Texas could also mean that undocumented migrants detained in the US interior could ultimately be moved and processed there.

"If you're picking up people in blue states, and they don't have detention facilities available, then do you try to move them to red states?" she asked. "That's the question.""


US nursing student Laken Riley's killer guilty of murder

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23829939rjo, today

An undocumented immigrant accused of killing nursing student Laken Riley has been found guilty of murder by a judge in the US state of Georgia.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan, killed the 22-year-old university student in February after going “hunting for females” on the University of Georgia (UGA) campus, the week-long trial heard.

Ibarra’s lawyers had argued that evidence linking him to Ms Riley’s death was “circumstantial”.

The case gained national attention as illegal immigration became a defining issue in the 2024 presidential election.

Ms Riley, who lived in the city of Athens, north-east Georgia, was found dead in a wooded area of the UGA campus after she did not return from her morning run on 22 February this year.

Ibarra was arrested a day later.

On Wednesday, he was found guilty of all 10 counts, including felony murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape.

Ibarra had waived his right to a jury trial, which means his case was heard and decided by a county judge, H Patrick Haggard.

He is expected to be sentenced later on Wednesday.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence without parole. In their closing arguments, they outlined how evidence showed that Ibarra's DNA was found under the nails of Ms Riley, indicating that a struggled had ensued between them.

Ibarra's lawyers, on the other hand, argued that the evidence presented should leave the judge "with some reasonable doubt".

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Is nuclear power gaining new energy?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr764nr873o, today

A decade ago, it seemed as though the global nuclear industry was in an irreversible decline.

Concerns over safety, cost, and what to do with radioactive waste had sapped enthusiasm for a technology once seen as a revolutionary source of abundant cheap energy.

Yet now there is widespread talk of a revival, fuelled by tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon all announcing investments in the sector, as well as the growing pressures on wealthy nations to curb their carbon emissions.

But how real is the comeback?

When commercial nuclear power was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s, governments were seduced by its seemingly unlimited potential.

Nuclear reactors could harness and control the same awesome forces released by atomic bombs - to provide electricity for millions of homes. With a single kilogram of uranium yielding some 20,000 times as much energy as a kilogram of coal, it seemed like the future.

But the technology also inspired public fear. And that fear seemed to be justified by the Chernobyl disaster, which spread radioactive contamination across Europe in early 1986.

It fuelled widespread public and political opposition – and slowed the growth of the industry.

Another accident, at the Fukushima Daichi plant in Japan in 2011, re-energised concerns about nuclear safety. Japan itself shut down all of its reactors in the immediate aftermath, and only 12 have since restarted.

Germany decided to phase out nuclear power altogether. Other countries scaled back plans to invest in new power plants, or extend the lives of ageing facilities.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, this led to the loss of 48GW of electric power generation globally between 2011 and 2020.

But nuclear development did not stop. In China, for example, there were 13 nuclear reactors in 2011. There are now 55, with another 23 under construction.

For Beijing, scrambling to meet rapidly growing electricity demand, nuclear had, and still has, a vital role to play.

Now interest in the sector seems to be growing elsewhere once again. This is partly because developed countries are hunting for ways to meet energy demand, while striving to meet emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.

With 2024 projected to be the warmest year on record, the pressure to cut carbon emissions is mounting. A renewed focus on energy security, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has also been a factor.

South Korea, for example, recently scrapped plans to phase out its large fleet of nuclear power stations over the next four decades – and will build more instead.

And France has reversed plans to reduce its own reliance on nuclear energy, which provides 70% of its electricity. Instead, it wants to build up to eight new reactors.

In addition, last week the US government reaffirmed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Cop29, held in Azerbaijan, that it intends to triple nuclear power generation by 2050.

The White House had originally pledged to do this on the side lines of last year's conference, Cop28. A total of 31 countries have now agreed to try to triple their use of nuclear power by 2050, including the UK, France and Japan.

Also at Cop29, which ends on Friday, 22 November, the US and UK announced that they would collaborate to speed up the development of new nuclear power technology.

This follows after it was agreed in the final statement or “stocktake” of last year's Cop28 that nuclear should be one of the zero or low emission technologies to be “accelerated” to help combat climate change.

But hunger for clean power is not just coming from governments. Technology giants are striving to develop more and more applications that use artificial intelligence.

Yet AI relies on data – and data centres need constant, reliable electricity. According to Barclays Research, data centres account for 3.5% of electricity consumption in the US today, but that figure could rise to more than 9% by the end of the decade.

In September, Microsoft signed a 20-year deal to buy power from Constellation Energy, which will lead to the reopening of the infamous Three Mile Island power station in Pennsylvania – the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, where a reactor suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.

Despite its tainted public image, another reactor at the plant continued to generate electricity until 2019. Constellation’s chief executive Joe Dominguez described the deal to reopen it as a "powerful symbol of the rebirth of nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy resource".

Other tech giants have taken a different approach. Google plans to buy energy produced from a handful of so-called Small Modular Reactors or SMRs – a nascent technology intended to make nuclear energy easier and cheaper to deploy. Amazon is also supporting SMR development and construction.

SMRs themselves are being promoted, in part, as a solution to one of the biggest drawbacks facing nuclear power today. In western nations, new power stations have to be built to exacting modern safety standards. This makes them prohibitively expensive and complicated to build.

Hinkley Point C is a good example. Britain’s first new nuclear power station since the mid-1990s is being built on a stretch of remote coastline in southwest England.

It is meant to be the first of a batch of new plants to replace the country’s ageing reactor fleet. But the project is running some five years behind schedule and will cost up to £9bn ($11.5bn) more than planned.

It is not an isolated case. The US’s newest reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia opened seven years late, and cost more than $35bn – well over double their original budget.

SMRs are designed to solve this problem. They will be smaller than traditional reactors, using standardised parts that can be assembled quickly, at sites close to where the power is needed.

But while there are some 80 different designs under development globally, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the concept has yet to be proven commercially.

Opinions about nuclear power remain highly polarised. Supporters claim the technology is indispensable if climate targets are to be reached. Among them is Rod Adams, whose Nucleation Capital fund promotes investment in nuclear technology.

“Nuclear fission has a seven-decade history showing it is one of the safest power sources available," he explains.

“It is a durable, reliable source of power with low ongoing costs already, but capital costs have been too high in Western countries."

Opponents though, insist nuclear power is not the answer.

According to Professor M.V. Ramana of the University of British Columbia, it is “a folly to consider nuclear energy as clean”. It is, he says, "one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity. Investing in cheaper low-carbon sources of energy will provide more emissions reductions per dollar."

If current trends do herald a new nuclear age, one old problem remains. After 70 years of atomic power, there is still disagreement over what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste - some of which will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

The answer being pursued by many governments is geological disposal - burying the waste in sealed tunnels deep underground. But only one country, Finland, has actually built such a facility, while environmentalists and anti-nuclear campaigners argue that dumping waste out of sight and out of mind is simply too risky.

Solving that conundrum may be a key factor in dictating whether there really will be a new age of nuclear power.


Rust premieres at low-key film festival three years after shooting

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20722062gyo, today

The western Rust has premiered in Poland, three years after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed on set in New Mexico.

Organisers of Poland’s Camerimage International Film Festival said the screening was a tribute to the 42-year-old Ukrainian-born cinematographer, who was a fan of the event and had attended in the past.

The movie’s star Alec Baldwin was not invited and did not attend the premiere.

Writer and director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, told the BBC at the premiere that at one point he "couldn’t even conceive of ever being back on the set ever again, it just hurt too much".

He said he changed his mind and decided to complete the film after speaking to Hutchins' husband, Matt.

But the announcement that Camerimage in the northern Polish city of Torun was going to give the movie its international debut has been criticised by some prominent cinematographers in Hollywood for being disrespectful to Hutchins' memory.

Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, who is suing the production and Alec Baldwin in a civil action, didn’t attend either.

In a statement issued by her lawyer she said she regards the premiere as an attempt to profit from her daughter’s death.

“Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologise to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death,” she said.

Souza, who attended the premiere with Cline who replaced Hutchins as the film’s cinematographer, refused several requests to complete the film after the tragic shooting, saying he "couldn’t even conceive of ever being back on the set ever again because it just hurt too much".

He said Hutchins' husband, Matt, convinced him to complete the film, which is dedicated to her.

"At first I didn’t really know if I wanted to do this to be honest, but as I found out that this is what Matt wanted, this is what the family wanted, it started to change the equation for me," he told the BBC.

"It was going to be more about honouring her legacy and her memory, saying that her final work was completed and that began to change my mind on things," he added.

Both he and Cline acknowledged that many in the industry were uncomfortable with his decision.

“Everybody’s angry, we’re angry as well. It’s something tragic and it’s hard to deal with. Some people think it’s better to deal with that through not participating and other people think it’s honourable like we do. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer to this,” Cline told the BBC.

Before the screening, Rachel Mason, a close friend of Hutchins who filmed a documentary about the making of Rust, recalled how difficult it was to complete the movie with all the controversy surrounding it.

She said some crew members told her not to film them on the closed set, in case, she said, it was discovered they had worked on Rust "and I might never get a job again".

Crew came back to finish the filming after they realised it might help Hutchins' family.

"She had this amazing gift of becoming friends very, very fast with people. And they all fell in love with her," she said.

Ms Mason also recounted a conversation with Hutchins' mother 18 months ago during which she told her she wanted the film to be completed because it was her daughter’s "big work".

Rust depicts the manhunt for grandfather and grandson amidst a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and tumbleweed dirt towns.

It knowingly acknowledges classic westerns including John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ and Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’.

Souza was very close to his own grandfather, who, he said, loved westerns.

Several people I spoke to after the screening enjoyed the movie with Jan, a film colourist from Warsaw calling it "a classic western".

Leonora, a cinematographer from Belarus said it was brilliant and she had cried all the way through Ms Mason’s speech.

One viewer noted the many gunfight scenes involving Alec Baldwin could be distracting.

“All the time as I was thinking about it, especially during the gunfight scenes, it was hard not to get pulled back out of the movie, especially when Alec Baldwin’s holding a gun, but most of the time it was just a really, really enjoyable experience,” Maciej from Torun said.

In a statement, Melina Spadone, representative for Rust Movie Productions, defended the festival against some of the criticism.

"The Camerimage festival celebrates the artistry of cinematographers; it is not a festival for buyers.

"None of the producers of Rust stand to benefit financially from the film. The suggestion that those involved in completing Halyna Hutchins’ film were motivated by profit is disrespectful to those who worked tirelessly to honor her legacy.”


What are the Storm Shadow missiles Ukraine has fired into Russia?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rwkk9r51jo, today

Ukraine has used longer-range Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russia for the first time, the BBC understands.

The move follows US President Joe Biden giving Ukraine the green light to use Atacms missiles supplied by Washington to strike inside Russia, prompting a furious response from the Kremlin.

Ukraine had been using both missiles for months, but only against targets in territory occupied by Russia.

What is Storm Shadow?

Storm Shadow is an Anglo-French cruise missile with a maximum range of around 250km (155 miles). The French call it Scalp.

It is launched from an aircraft, then flies at close to the speed of sound, hugging the terrain, before dropping down and detonating its high explosive warhead.

Storm Shadow - made by manufacturer MBDA - is considered an ideal weapon for penetrating hardened bunkers and ammunition stores, such as those used by Russia in its war against Ukraine.

But each missile costs nearly US$1m (£767,000), so they tend only to be launched as part of a carefully planned flurry of much cheaper drones, sent ahead to confuse and exhaust the enemy’s air defences, just as Russia does to Ukraine.

They have been used with great effect, hitting Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters at Sevastopol and making the whole of Crimea unsafe for the Russian navy.

Justin Crump, a military analyst, former British Army officer and CEO of the Sibylline consultancy, says Storm Shadow has been a highly effective weapon for Ukraine, striking precisely against well protected targets in occupied territory.

"It’s no surprise that Kyiv has lobbied for its use inside Russia, particularly to target airfields being used to mount the glide bomb attacks that have recently hindered Ukrainian front-line efforts," he says.

Has the UK changed its rules?

Why does Ukraine want Storm Shadow?

Its most immediate priority is blunting the expected Russian counter-attack on Ukrainian positions in the Kursk region of western Russia.

But Ukrainian cities and front lines are also under daily bombardment from Russia.

Many of the missiles and glide bombs that wreak devastation on military positions, blocks of flats and hospitals are launched by Russian aircraft far within Russia itself.

Kyiv has said that not being allowed to hit the bases these attacks were launched from was akin to making it fight this war with one arm tied behind its back.

Ukraine does have its own, innovative and effective long-range drone programme.

At times, these drone strikes have caught the Russians off guard and reached hundreds of kilometres inside Russia.

But they can only carry a small payload and most get detected and intercepted.

Kyiv argued that in order to push back the Russian air strikes, it needed longer-range missiles, including Storm Shadow.

The US decision to allow the use of its own long-range missiles is also intended to help Ukraine defend the small chunk of Russian territory it currently occupies in the Kursk region. A major assault by Russian and Northern Korean troops is expected.

With the green light to use long-range missiles, airfields and key logistics hubs deep inside Russia have also come within Ukraine’s range.

How much difference could Storm Shadow make?

Kyiv has been asking to use long-range Western missiles inside Russia for so long that Moscow has already taken precautions.

It has moved bombers, missiles and some of the infrastructure that maintains them further back, away from the border with Ukraine and beyond the range of Storm Shadow.

There is scepticism among Western officials that Storm Shadow and the American Atacms will be decisive.

However, the Institute for the Study of War think tank (ISW) has identified around 225 Russian bases that would be in range of Storm Shadows fired from Ukraine.

And Sibylline's Justin Crump says that while Russian air defences have evolved to counter the threat of Storm Shadow within Ukraine, this task will be much harder given the scope of Moscow’s territory that could now be exposed to attack.

"This will make military logistics, command and control, and air support harder to deliver, and even if Russian aircraft pull back further from Ukraine’s frontiers to avoid the missile threat they will still suffer an increase in the time and costs per sortie to the front line."

Matthew Savill, director of military science at the Rusi think tank, believes it could also pose a dilemma for Russia as to where to position air defences, which could make it easier for Ukraine’s drones to get through.

Ultimately though, says Savill, Storm Shadow is unlikely to turn the tide. Ukraine doesn't have many missiles, and the UK has very few left to give.

What has Putin said about Western involvement in Ukraine's use of Storm Shadow missiles?

One reason President Putin views the use of Storm Shadow as an escalation is his belief that Ukrainian troops cannot use long-range missile systems without the aid of Western specialists.

He previously told reporters in Russia that "only servicemen of Nato countries can input flight missions into these missile systems," adding that Kyiv also relies on satellite intelligence supplied by the West to choose targets.

Manufacturer MBDA declined to comment on the claims when approached by the BBC, directing queries to the UK Ministry of Defence.

A spokesperson for Ukraine's presidential office also declined to address Putin's allegations, saying they could not comment on "special technical details regarding weapons".

Justin Crump cast doubt on Putin's claim, telling the BBC that if "that claim were true, then Russia would have made it more clearly when the weapons were first supplied, and when they conducted successful and impactful operations against for example the Black Sea Fleet HQ in occupied Crimea".

"The missile is available for export sales; is Russia seriously saying that any buyer would have to have a Nato/UK team to program and use the missile? That must presumably be buried deep in the fine print of the brochure, and wouldn't make it an appealing prospect," he noted.


Al Fayed abuse ‘could be on scale of Savile’, says survivors’ advocate

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c937670xvyvo, today

The scale of Mohamed Al Fayed’s sexual abuse could be similar to that of Jimmy Savile’s, Harrods’ newly appointed survivors’ advocate has told the BBC.

There has been a torrent of allegations against the late billionaire businessman since a BBC documentary in September broadcast the claims of 20 women.

Speaking about her appointment earlier this month, Dame Jasvinder Sanghera said she had been contacted by a former pupil from a school for deaf children.

Al Fayed “had access to vulnerable young women from that school”, she said, adding that testimony she had heard suggested that Al Fayed’s “tentacles went far and wide”.

The school told the BBC that as far as it was aware Al Fayed did not have access to the school, and that it takes safeguarding very seriously.

“We could be talking about something on the scale of Jimmy Savile,” Dame Jasvinder told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme.

“What we do know is that there are many people - and survivors have said this to me already - that were complicit [in Al Fayed’s abuse].

“They looked the other way. This could not have happened without people knowing about it, and he used his position of power and influence.”

Savile was one of Britain’s most notorious and prolific sex offenders. He was a TV presenter and DJ who, until his death in 2011, used his prominent status to rape and sexually assault hundreds of people.

In 2012, the Metropolitan Police said they believed there were 450 victims of Savile's abuse. He often used philanthropic work as a cover for his crimes.

Dame Jasvinder added that there are currently about 290 women engaged in Harrods’ compensation process for former employees who say they had been abused by Al Fayed, and that she had written a personal letter to each of them.

Separately, more than 70 women have contacted the BBC since the documentary was broadcast, with accounts of abuse by Al Fayed, including sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.

But Dame Jasvinder believes there are others who have not yet come forward.

She added that she is keen to speak to all victims of Al Fayed’s abuse, even if they didn’t work at Harrods.

Al Fayed is alleged to have also abused women at other businesses he owned, including the Ritz Paris hotel and Fulham FC.

She said: “If you look at the breadth of the abuse, this didn’t just happen in Harrods. I’m already hearing from survivors who are saying this happened in other areas.”

The Harrods compensation scheme is only open to people who worked for the company.

But Dame Jasvinder said she “would never turn anybody away that was in need of support – even if they need to access me to talk that through, for me to be able to identify the appropriate level of support or process for them.

“I would absolutely encourage anyone affected by this, or who may know somebody that’s affected, who just wants to have a conversation about the process, to absolutely contact me.”

Dame Jasvinder is a prominent human rights campaigner and the founder of the charity Karma Nirvana, which helps victims of honour-based abuse.

She has previously spoken about her parents attempting to force her to marry when she was a teenager, her escape, and being disowned as a result.

Dame Jasvinder was also a survivor advocate on the Church of England’s Independent Safeguarding Board until the panel was sacked in June 2023, when the Church said relations between board members and bishops had "broken down".

Harrods launched an internal review last year to see whether anyone involved in any allegations is still working there. As yet they have declined to say whether any action has been taken against any individual, or when the review might be completed.

Hundreds of women are also working with separate legal firms in claims against the retailer.

At a press conference last month, Justice for Harrods Survivors, which represents some of the accusers, said more than 400 alleged victims and witnesses had been in contact with them.

Most of the 421 prospective claims were connected to Harrods, but others related to incidents at other businesses owned by Al Fayed, the group said.

The survivors included people from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia, the lawyers added.

Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, which aired in September, heard testimony from more than 20 female ex-employees at Harrods.

The documentary and podcast found that during Al Fayed's ownership, Harrods not only failed to intervene but helped cover up abuse allegations.

Responding to the investigation, Harrods' current owners said they were “utterly appalled” by the allegations and that his victims had been failed - for which the store sincerely apologised.

* If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email MAFinvestigation@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods

A BBC investigation into allegations of rape and attempted rape by Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods. Did the luxury store protect a billionaire predator?

Watch Al-Fayed: Predator at Harrods on BBC iPlayer now.

Listen to World of Secrets, Season 4: Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods on BBC Sounds. If you’re outside the UK, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.


Ukraine front could 'collapse' as Russia gains accelerate, experts warn

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0dpdx420lo, today

President Biden’s decision to provide anti-personnel mines to Ukraine, and allow the use of long-range missiles on Russian territory comes as the Russian military is accelerating its gains along the front line.

Data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) shows that Russia has gained almost six times as much territory in 2024 as it did in 2023, and is advancing towards key Ukrainian logistical hubs in the eastern Donbas region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region is faltering. Russian troops have pushed Kyiv's offensive backwards. Experts have questioned the success of the offensive, with one calling it a "strategic catastrophe" given manpower shortages faced by Ukraine.

These developments come at a time of heightened uncertainty with a second Donald Trump administration looming. The US president-elect has vowed to bring the war to a close when he takes office in January, with some fearing he could cut future military aid to Ukraine.

Russia advances in eastern Ukraine

In the first few months of the war the front line moved quickly, with Russia gaining ground quickly before being pushed back by a Ukrainian counteroffensive. But in 2023 neither side made any major gains - with the conflict largely sliding into a stalemate.

But new ISW figures suggest the story in 2024 is more favourable for Russia. The ISW bases its analysis on confirmed social media footage and reports of troop movements.

The ISW data shows Moscow’s forces have seized around 2,700 sq km of Ukrainian territory so far this year, compared with just 465 sq km in the whole of 2023, a near six-fold increase.

Dr Marina Miron, a defence researcher at Kings College London, suggested to the BBC that there was a possibility the Ukrainian eastern front “might actually collapse” if Russia continued to advance at pace.

More than 1000 sq km was taken between 1 September and 3 November, suggesting the push accelerated in recent months. Two areas bearing the brunt of these advances are Kupiansk in Kharkiv region, and Kurakhove, a stepping stone to the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region.

The Kursk gambit

Ukraine launched its shock incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August. It is unclear why Russia took so long to respond to the operation, which saw Kyiv’s troops quickly gain control over a number of border communities.

Dr Miron suggested that while the Kremlin would suffer a domestic political cost for as long as the incursion continued, Russia’s general staff had been keen to keep Ukraine’s forces tied down in Kursk as its forces made gains elsewhere along the front line.

But Moscow is now clearly intent on reclaiming the territory lost on its own soil. Some 50,000 troops have been deployed to the region.

Verified videos from the Kursk region show fierce fighting is taking place - and that Russia is suffering considerable losses in terms of manpower and equipment. But the data clearly shows Ukraine’s control of the region is shrinking.

Since the start of October, Russian counter-attacks have regained some 593 sq km worth of territory in the border region, ISW figures showed.

The Kursk incursion was initially a major boon for Ukraine in terms of morale at a time of serious setbacks, and the audacity of the operation was a reminder of its ability to surprise and harm its enemy.

But Dr Miron said while the Kursk incursion was a moment of “tactical brilliance” it has also been a “strategic catastrophe” for Ukraine.

“The whole idea was to maybe gain some political leverage in potential negotiations, but militarily to draw the Russian forces away from the Donbas in order to liberate Kursk. And what we're seeing instead is that Ukrainian units are tied down there.”

Some of Kyiv’s most experienced and effective units are known to be fighting in Kursk. Mechanised units equipped with state-of-the-art Western armour are also involved in the offensive.

Ukrainian leaders had hinted that they hoped the incursion would force Moscow to redirect some of its forces from eastern Ukraine, slowing the Russian advance there. Instead, experts say most reinforcements were moved to Kursk from parts in Ukraine where the fighting is not as intense.

“According to Ukrainian soldiers from different parts of the front, the Russian troops reinforcing Kursk were mainly pulled from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia,” Yurri Clavilier, a land analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the BBC.

“The fighting there is not as intense as it is in the East. Some Russian units attacking Kharkiv were also redirected to Kursk as Ukraine managed to stall the Russian onslaught there,” he added.

The importance of territory to both sides is the strength it lends to their position in any potential negotiations. Although no peace negotiations have been discussed, US President-elect Trump has claimed he could end the war within 24 hours, without saying exactly how.

Fears persist in Ukraine that Trump could cut military aid as a means to force Kyiv to the table. President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News on Tuesday "I think we will lose [the war]" if cuts are pushed through.

"We have our production, but it's not enough to prevail and I think it's not enough to survive," he said.

​​On Tuesday, Ukraine fired US-supplied long-range missiles into Russia for the first time - a day after Washington gave it permission to do so.​​ It is thought that the decision was made in part to help Ukraine hold on to part of the Kursk region, to help use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.

Dr Miron told the BBC that Russia’s advance has handed them a stronger negotiating position as Trump’s new foreign policy team prepare to take office.

“What they're controlling right now, it does give them a certain advantage,” she said. “If it came to negotiations, I'm sure that as the Russian side has been stressing, ‘we will do it based on the battlefield configuration’.

“From a Russian perspective, they have much better cards than the Ukrainians.”

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Trump voters shrug off cabinet pick controversies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwzn057n7o, today

Some of US President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks look likely to face a fierce confirmation battle in Washington as their fitness to safeguard the rule of law, national security and public health comes under scrutiny.

US Vice-President-elect JD Vance, an Ohio senator, is introducing the contenders to his colleagues on Capitol Hill this week as the incoming Trump administration seeks to smooth the path of its transition.

But while the prospective appointees could face pushback in the Senate, they have received a largely positive reception so far from Republican voters contacted by the BBC.

Virtually all of them approved of his cabinet picks, hailing them as much-needed disruptors to what they see as a corrupt establishment.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence, has been accused by critics of casting doubt on the very spy agencies she would oversee, while her allies say attempts to portray the military veteran as a Kremlin asset amount to a smear.

An opinion poll this week by Echelon Insights found that all of Trump’s cabinet picks - apart from Gaetz - have a slight edge in net favourability from members of the American public who participated in the survey.

But voter reaction mirrors sentiments about Trump himself and not all Republicans approve of his selections.

Michele Allen, a self-described "Never Trumper" from Arizona, told the BBC she is “flabbergasted” by the line-up.

“It’s a good-old-boys’ club and [Trump’s] appointing people to positions where they’re going to hurt a lot of people by getting their personal vendettas across,” Allen says.

The 39-year-old, who works in healthcare, says she is “quite disgusted” by RFK Jr’s pick as health secretary.

But voters who backed Trump told the BBC they see the criticism of the nominees as more reason to approve of them.

Dominic Bashford, 28, said he sees Trump’s picks as change-makers.

"I really feel the new Trump administration is giving me a voice," he told the BBC.

He hopes Gabbard will put an end to the "constant wars".

Bashford also said he is “excited” about the prospect of RFK leading the health department, despite the furore over his questioning of vaccines.

The one Trump pick Bashford does not like is Rubio.

"If [former US National Security Adviser] John Bolton's a fan of someone, I take that as a big scare," Bashford said.

Meanwhile, Indiana resident Alli Rastrelli, 20, said she was happy with some of Trump's cabinet selections like Gabbard and Kennedy, even if she does question their credentials.

"These people seem more like they were loyal to [Trump] during the campaign so [he is] rewarding them with a position, rather than they are the most qualified person for the position," Rastrelli said.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the presidential election in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.


Putin gifts lion and brown bears to North Korea zoo

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24175015jo, today

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gifted North Korea's main zoo more than 70 animals, including a lion and two brown bears, in yet another display of burgeoning relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Putin's environment minister, Alexander Kozlov, brought the animals to the North Korean capital on board a cargo plane, Kozlov's office said on its official Telegram channel on Wednesday.

The shipment of animals from Moscow also included two yaks, five cockatoos and dozens of pheasants as well as mandarin ducks, Kozlov's office said.

The gift comes weeks after the US and South Korea revealed that North Korea had sent thousands of troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine.

While in Pyongyang the Russian environment minister also paid a courtesy visit to Kim.

This isn't the first time in recent memory that Russia has sent animals to North Korea.

Earlier this year, Putin gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un 24 pure-bred horses, reportedly as thanks for artillery shells provided by North Korea.

Putin and Kim have strengthened their alliance in recent months as both countries face sanctions from the West.

The Russian president needs support for his war in Ukraine while North Korea needs Russia's space technology which could aid its missile programme.

That burgeoning alliance was on full display in June when Putin visited North Korea and signed an agreement with Kim to protect each other's nations from "aggression".

During that visit, Putin gifted Kim with a Russian-made Aurus limousine, tea set and artwork.

Kim is believed to be a car enthusiast and has been seen in a Maybach limousine, several Mercedes, a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Lexus sports utility vehicle.

Putin had also gifted Kim with an Aurus in February, five months after Kim visited the Vostochny space centre in Russia's Far East.


Liam Payne's funeral to be held on Wednesday

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7d2k41l6vo, today

The funeral of One Direction star Liam Payne will take place on Wednesday, just over a month after he died at the age of 31.

His former bandmates are among those expected to attend the private service in the Home Counties, alongside his family and closest friends.

The musician died after falling from a third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

An autopsy confirmed the 31-year-old had suffered internal and external bleeding and multiple traumatic injuries sustained as a result of the fall.

In a short statement following his death, Liam's family said: "We are heartbroken. Liam will forever live in our hearts and we'll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul."

Payne was one of the most recognisable names in pop, after rising to fame on the X Factor in the 2010s.

Despite only coming third on the show, One Direction went on to become the biggest British group since The Beatles

During their five-year career, they sold 70 million records, including four UK number one singles and four number one albums.

A co-writer on many of their hits, Payne also achieved solo success with tracks like Strip That Down and Bedroom Floor.

He is survived by his parents, two sisters, and his son Bear, whom he had with Girls Aloud singer Cheryl.

Payne's girlfriend at the time of his death, Kate Cassidy, is also expected to attend the funeral on Wednesday.


Vatican in row at climate talks over gender rights

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxvpl5zw19o, today

The Vatican has blocked discussions over women’s rights at the UN climate summit following a row over gay and transgender issues, sources have told BBC News.

Pope Francis’ representatives have aligned with Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Egypt to obstruct a deal which would have provided more support, including financial help, for women at the forefront of climate change, Colombia’s environment minister told the BBC.

Charities including ActionAid said it is crucial a deal is reached as the UN estimates women and girls currently make up 80% of those displaced by climate change.

Representatives from the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Egypt did not respond to requests for comment.

Countries at this year’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan were due to update the ten-year old UN action plan to make sure that any work on climate change took account of the experiences of women and channelled more money to them.

For a decade it has been called the Lima Work Programme on Gender.

But the Vatican, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Egypt now do not want any reference to "gender" - over concerns it could include transgender women, and want references to gay woman removed, the BBC has been told by charities observing the talks and negotiators from other countries.

This has stalled the whole deal on progressing women’s access to support in the face of climate change, they say.

"It is unacceptable," Colombia's environment minister and lead negotiator Susana Muhamad said of the stalling. She was one of the only country representatives willing to speak on the record. The others spoke to the BBC anonymously on the grounds that they were taking part in ongoing negotiations.

"The Latin American countries are working very hard – we will not allow the gender programme to drop and allow human rights to be dropped," she told BBC News.

For more than a decade it has been acknowledged by countries globally that women face a disproportionate burden from climate change, often due to their caring roles and interruption of access to reproductive services during climate disasters.

According to UN Women, by 2050 close to 240 million more women and girls will face food insecurity caused by climate change compared to 131 million more men and boys. Whilst at the same time only 0.01% of funding globally goes to climate change projects that also take account of women.

In the new plan African and EU countries wanted to also include a line that not all women’s experiences of climate change are the same - that they can differ depending on their "gender, sex, age and race".

The Vatican, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt and Iran, said they took issue with the use of the word "gender" which they think could include transgender women, country negotiators told the BBC.

Charities observing this were surprised as over the course of a decade these countries had not taken issue with the use of the word.

“I was shocked when the Vatican raised their flag and opposed the human rights language,” said Sostina Takure, from Christian charity ACT Alliance. "My heart shattered into a million pieces."

Mwanahamisi Singano, the policy lead for the Women's Environment and Development Organization, told the BBC the group of countries also opposed the text as they did not want to reference gay women.

Ms Singano, who was in the negotiating room, said countries like Iran argued that homosexuality was illegal under their laws and therefore they would not allow those groups to be recognised in the text.

Aid charities have said the deadlock has put the whole deal over support for women in jeopardy with just three days to go before the conference ends.

"I think if things continue the way they are it is not looking good for women’s rights in the negotiations," said Zahra Hdidou, senior climate adviser at ActionAid.


Anti-landmine groups criticise US for sending mines to Ukraine

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yrejnnl8jo, today

The US has been criticised by humanitarian organisations for deciding to supply Ukraine with landmines, as the war in eastern Europe rages on.

In an interview with the BBC, Human Rights Watch director Mary Wareham said the decision marked a "shocking and devastating development" for those working to eradicate anti-personnel landmines.

The approval from Washington is an attempt to slow down Russian troops, who have been steadily advancing into Ukraine's east in recent months.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said they made their decision because of how Russia had changed its tactics on the battlefield - sending in troops first rather than "mechanised forces".

In reaction to Wednesday's news from Washington, the Halo Trust, the world's largest landmine clearing charity, said: "The potential for further contagion of the use of anti-personnel (AP) landmines in eastern Europe is a clear and present danger".

According to its statement, the Halo Trust said Ukraine has been reclassified this month as "massively contaminated" with landmines, and some of the charity's estimates suggest they are present in up to 40% of the country.

The Halo Trust goes on to report, according to its estimates, that more than two million landmines have been laid in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war in 2022.

The provision of anti-personnel land mines is the latest move by the outgoing US administration to bolster Ukraine's war effort before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.

It is a big shift in policy for Joe Biden himself, who previously called Trump “reckless” for lifting long-standing US restrictions on the use of mines when he was last in the White House.

Earlier, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba defended the US's position, saying it is within international law, but adds there are "moral ramifications for human rights defenders, and I totally get them".

"But we're fighting a war against a vicious enemy and we must have the right to use everything we need within the realm of international law to defend ourselves," he said.


Man who drugged wife in French mass rape case told: You'll die alone

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8722kz54go, today

Tensions at the French mass rape trial burst into the open on Wednesday when Dominique Pelicot’s daughter Caroline shouted at her father from across the courtroom that he would “die alone like a dog”.

Caroline Darian, 45, has repeatedly said she is convinced her father drugged and abused her after semi-naked photos of her asleep were found on his laptop.

He has denied abusing her but has admitted drugging his wife Gisèle for a decade and recruiting men online to rape her in their home when she was unconscious.

Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men have been on trial since September, and a verdict is expected on 20 December.

During an emotional day in court in Avignon, Gisèle Pelicot's lawyers gave their closing arguments, describing the historic nature of the trial and paying tribute to her courage in waiving her anonymity to bring the mass rape trial into the open.

In her statements to the court Caroline spoke of her anguish at what she says are persistent lies by her father.

Earlier this week, with a voice full of emotion, she told the court her life had “stopped” when police first showed her photos from her father's laptop in 2020.

On Wednesday, Dominique Pelicot was given a chance to address his daughter while taking the stand for the final time in this trial.

The main defendant said he most wished he still had Caroline's support.

“Some may laugh but it’s my daughter I wish I could look at in the face. It hurts to see her like this,” he said, sitting in a glass box only metres away from his daughter and the rest of his family.

“I would love to see her, I would love to talk to her,” he added. As his voice faltered, Caroline’s rose: “I will never come see you. Never. You will die alone like a dog,” she shouted.

“We all die alone,” he replied. “You especially,” she hit back.

It was the last public exchange between a father and daughter who by all accounts had had, for many years, a loving and close relationship.

Mr Pelicot recalled visiting her in hospital when she was recovering from surgery as a child so he could hold her and comfort her, and shared memories of her teenage years.

When he repeated that he would always love her even if she had stopped loving him, she looked ahead silently, tears streaming down her face – but did not respond.

It was only later, when the session ended, that she approached the box her father sat in and shouted: “You had two months [to tell the truth]!”

During questioning, Mr Pelicot also stated that he was a sex addict and that getting found out by police in November 2020 had “unburdened him”.

He denied that his crimes against his wife had been sparked by an inferiority complex or by a desire for revenge for an affair she had in the 1980s.

Asked what he thought about chemical submission - drugging someone for the purposes of coercion or assault - he answered: “It’s crap. It annihilates everything. It should never be done.”

Mr Pelicot’s statements were followed by closing arguments from Gisèle Pelicot’s legal team.

Lawyers for the 50 other defendants will give their own closing arguments from next week. They are expected to explore more deeply the defence that many of the men cannot be guilty because they did not realise Ms Pelicot was unconscious and therefore did not "know" they were raping her.

Over almost three hours Ms Pelicot's lawyers, Antoine Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, retold the horrific story of Dominique Pelicot’s crimes, peppering their account with literary references.

"Everyone contributed to this monstrosity on their own level, and allowed a woman's ordeal to go on. It's the banality of evil of [philosopher] Hannah Arendt," said Mr Camus.

They pleaded with the judges to hand down sentences that reflected the extent of the suffering of Gisèle Pelicot and her family.

Mr Camus said he was aware of the “expectations and hopes in this room and beyond” for the trial, which he said he described as historic, because “we badly, urgently want and need it to be".

Leaning heavily on the notion of free will, he dismissed the defence’s argument that many of the men who allegedly raped Ms Pelicot did so because they were intimidated, manipulated or tricked by her husband. "Manipulation is not hypnosis," he said.

The fact they were all aware that Mr Pelicot was “recruiting” many other men too should be taken into account by the judges, he added.

“Everyone who came into that house of horrors knew that others had come before him and others would follow,” Mr Camus said.

His colleague painted a devastating picture of Ms Pelicot’s life since her husband’s crimes had become known.

Stéphane Babonneau then described what had led Ms Pelicot – who by then was living in a small village under her maiden name – to give up her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media.

It was in 2023, he said, when French media began reporting on the Pelicot case using pseudonyms that “a feeling of rebellion started to take hold of Gisèle Pelicot".

"She decided to take back control of her life. The moment had come for shame to change sides.”

The will to stop hiding had awoken in her, he said, because she hadn’t done anything wrong. And she thought the details of her case and the videos of the alleged assaults would help expose the reality of rape.

“For her story to be useful and to help other women she understood she had to give up the anonymity that had served her for years,” Mr Babonneau explained. “She had to accept she would forever be the victim of the Mazan rapes.”

The lawyer also urged judges not to accept that the defendants had made a “mistake” when – as some have said – they raped Ms Pelicot involuntarily or “out of stupidity or ignorance”.

“If you accept the right to make a mistake, what will stop another man tomorrow from saying that when a woman told him ‘no’ he actually understood ‘yes’? That he also made a mistake?”

“I ask you to reject the right to make mistakes which would put society in danger – and at the risk of seeing more Gisèle Pelicots,” Mr Babonneau said.

He ended by paying tribute to Ms Pelicot and said the trial would be a “legacy” for future generations: “They will hear the name Gisèle Pelicot, they will hear about her courage and about the price she paid.”

Turning to look at Ms Pelicot, he said: “You did your job. You went beyond what was expected of you.”

“Now, pass on the torch to the others to carry on the fight you never chose.”

Gisèle Pelicot, to his right, wiped her eyes.


Fourth tourist dies in suspected alcohol poisoning in Laos

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c245243m3m9o, today

Australian teen Bianca Jones has become the fourth tourist to have died in a suspected mass poisoning in Laos.

The 19-year-old's family confirmed her death to the media on Thursday. Hours earlier, the US State Department told the media that an American man died in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.

Two Danish women, aged 19 and 20, also died last week in Laos, authorities confirmed, while Jones' friend Holly Bowles and a British woman are reportedly on life support in hospital.

The deaths remain under police investigation, but news reports and testimonies from fellow tourists suggest they may have consumed drinks laced with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Department of Foreign Affairs had confirmed Ms Jones's death.

"Our first thoughts in this moment are with her family and friends who are grieving a terrible and cruel loss," Albanese said during a parliamentary session on Thursday afternoon.

"This is every parent's very worst fear and a nightmare that no one should have to endure."

He said he hoped Ms Bowles would recover well.


Death penalty for Thai woman accused of murdering 14 friends with cyanide

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jr2z9315lo, today

A woman in Thailand has been sentenced to death in the first of a string of cases in which she is accused of murdering 14 friends with cyanide.

The court in Bangkok found Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, 36, guilty of putting poison in a wealthy friend's food and drink while they were on a trip last year.

Relatives of the friend refused to accept she died of natural causes and an autopsy found traces of cyanide in her body. Police arrested Sararat and uncovered other similar deaths going back to 2015. One person she allegedly targeted survived.

Police say Sararat, dubbed Am Cyanide by Thai media, had a gambling addiction and targeted friends she owed money to, then stole their jewellery and valuables.

Sararat travelled with her friend Siriporn Khanwong, 32, to Ratchaburi province, west of Bangkok in April 2023, where they took part in a Buddhist protection ritual at a river, police said.

Siriporn collapsed and died after a meal with Sararat, who made no effort to help her, investigators said.

Traces of cyanide were found in Siriporn's body and her phone, money and bags were missing when she was found, police said.

"You got justice, my child. Today, there is justice in this world," Siriporn's mother, Thongpin Kiatchanasiri, said in front of the courtroom, as she held a photo of her daughter.

Thongpin said that out of anger, she could not stand to look at Sararat, who she said was smiling when the sentence was being read. Sararat pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.

Her former husband, an ex-police officer, and her lawyer, were handed prison terms of one year and four months, and two years respectively, for hiding evidence to help her evade prosecution. They had also pleaded not guilty before Wednesday's sentencing.

The ex-husband, Vitoon Rangsiwuthaporn, gave himself up last year. Police said he most likely helped Sararat poison an ex-boyfriend, Suthisak Poonkwan.

Sararat was also ordered to pay Siriporn's family two million baht ($57,667; £45,446) in compensation.

Cyanide starves the body's cells of oxygen, which can induce heart attacks. Early symptoms include dizziness, shortness of breath and vomiting.

It can lead to lung injury, coma and death within seconds when consumed in large amounts, but even small doses can still be very harmful.

Its use in Thailand is heavily regulated and those found to have unauthorised access face up two years in jail.


Archegos founder sentenced to 18 years in prison

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7npy2j94vo, today

Former Wall Street investor, Sung Kook "Bill" Hwang, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison in a massive fraud case that cost banks billions of dollars.

The sentence comes after Hwang was found guilty of fraud and market manipulation in a case linked to the failure of his investment fund Archegos Capital Management in 2021.

"The amount of losses that were caused by your conduct are larger than any other losses I have dealt with," US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said before announcing the sentence, in quotes cited by Reuters news agency.

The prison term was slightly shorter than the 21-year prison sentence sought by prosecutors, but is still unusually long for a white-collar crime.

Prosecutors had also been seeking a restitution payment but the judge has not announced his decision on the matter. The sentencing hearing is set to resume on Thursday.

Hwang was found guilty of lying to major investment banks as he secretly amassed large bets on several companies.

When Archegos was unable to repay its lenders, it prompted a mass sell-off of stocks and the fund quickly collapsed in less than a week, making it one of the largest hedge fund collapses since the 2008 financial crisis.

Among the major banks that suffered huge losses as a result of Archegos' implosion were Credit Suisse, which has since become a part of UBS, Japan's Nomura and Morgan Stanley.

Hwang's lawyers had called for him not to be punished, citing his Christian faith and his donations to charity.

They also said his wealth, which at one point was valued at an estimated $30bn (£23.7bn), had fallen to an estimated $55m.

The judge called the requests for leniency "utterly ridiculous" due to the money involved and compared Hwang to the disgraced founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who received a 25-year sentence for fraud last year, according to Bloomberg.

Hwang's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Hwang's deputy at Archegos and co-defendant, Patrick Halligan, who was also found guilty on three criminal charges at the same trial, is set to be sentenced at a hearing scheduled for 27 January.


Logan Paul accused of misleading fans over crypto investments

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze386d3enpo, today

Logan Paul, the massively popular social media personality, is facing fresh questions over his cryptocurrency dealings amid ongoing concerns he may have profited from misleading fans.

The BBC has seen new evidence suggesting he promoted investments without revealing he had a financial interest in them.

The influence of Paul - whose YouTube channel has more than 23 million followers - appears to have caused prices in these investments to spike, leading to suggestions he could have profited from sales of any tokens he held.

Paul also currently faces a multi-million-dollar lawsuit over a failed crypto project called CryptoZoo.

He denies any wrongdoing.

The BBC has discovered that shortly before Paul tweeted about a particular crypto coin in 2021, an anonymous crypto wallet with close connections to his public wallet had traded in the coin.

That anonymous wallet went on to make a $120,000 (£92,000) profit.

Crypto wallets (which can be physical devices or an online service) hold users' keys to their accounts, and let people send, receive and spend crypto.

Our finding comes after Time Magazine reported similar activity involving a different cryptocurrency and another anonymous wallet.

For several months, Paul refused to talk to the BBC about our investigation. Then he appeared to relent, inviting us to interview him at his gym in Puerto Rico.

However, when our crew arrived, a Logan Paul lookalike turned up in the YouTuber’s place, shortly followed by a crowd shouting abuse about the BBC.

Minutes after abandoning the interview, we received a lawyer’s letter on behalf of Paul, warning us of the possible consequences if we published our findings.

Meme coins

Logan Paul built a worldwide following as an internet celebrity by uploading short video clips, first to the now-closed platform Vine, and then on YouTube.

About three years ago, Paul’s videos began mentioning cryptocurrency (crypto, as it is commonly known) more and more.

Crypto is a form of digital money that uses secure technology to work, without the need for a central bank.

In 2021, Paul promoted a series of extremely high-risk crypto tokens called “meme coins”.

These are usually inspired by internet jokes or memes and are supported by online communities. Meme coins have no other real purpose other than to be traded and, since they have no intrinsic worth, their value can - and often does - drop to zero.

Paul extolled the virtues of an Elon Musk-themed meme coin known as Elongate. “Elongate made me rich. Elon baby let’s go!” Paul announced in a video clip to Maverick Club, his subscription-only fan club.

Following this namecheck, the price of Elongate rose by over 6,000% to an all-time high. It then remained at that price for a few hours before it crashed.

We cannot be sure of Logan Paul’s intentions when he released his clip. However, it seems likely that his mention of Elongate affected its price.

Tech journalist Will Gotsegen says crypto is a market driven to some extent by social media and influencers: “A big guy with a lot of influence... someone like Logan Paul, buys a tonne of crypto and tells their followers about it. They're going to buy it too.”

The anonymous crypto wallet analysed by the BBC appears to have close connections to Paul.

Anyone can see the transactions made by a wallet, but the owner can choose to remain anonymous. If an owner attaches their name or personal details it becomes a public wallet.

We could see that the wallet first received funds in February 2021 from a public wallet owned by Logan Paul. It then started buying and trading crypto.

Logan Paul: Bad Influence?

Logan Paul, one of the biggest social media influencers in the world, is facing criticism for his role in promoting cryptocurrency projects. Matt Shea investigates the allegations.

Speaking to law enforcement and alleged victims, and trying to get close to the man himself, Shea seeks to finally answer the question: did Logan Paul do anything wrong?

Watch on BBC Three at 21:00, 20 November or on BBC iPlayer shortly after broadcast

The wallet was later paid funds from Maverick Club and held Elongate when Paul promoted it on 10 May 2021.

Shortly after, it also traded in another Musk-related meme coin - after Paul had tweeted that it was headed “to the moon”. In the crypto community, this means someone believes the price of the coin is about to shoot up.

About an hour before Paul’s tweet, the unknown wallet purchased almost $160,000 (£123,000) worth of the token. The tweet prompted an influx of buyers, spiking the price.

Twelve hours later, the wallet sold most of its holding. The total profit made from this trade appears to be just over $120,000 (£92,000).

Logan Paul chose not to respond to the BBC’s allegations regarding the crypto wallet, the trading that occurred within it, or his connection to it, despite responding to some of our other requests via his legal team.

Dink Doink

In June 2021, Paul also promoted a meme coin called “Dink Doink”.

Anyone who bought it would own shares in a cartoon character that resembled a metal coil. They would earn a portion of its earnings if it appeared in a TV show or film.

Paul promoted the token on Twitter (as the site was then known), and told a Telegram group dedicated to Dink Doink that he “believed” in it, saying: “I think it’s going to go crazy.”

Again, this led to a huge influx of buyers, causing Dink Doink's value to spike. Then - following a familiar pattern - large-scale holders of the token began selling, causing its price to fall by 96% in just two weeks.

Time Magazine analysed another anonymous wallet that had bought Dink Doink prior to Logan Paul’s promotion of the coin and then sold its holding shortly after. This wallet later sent $100,000 (£78,000) to Paul’s public wallet.

When the BBC asked the influencer about this wallet, his lawyers did not deny that it belonged to him, or was held for his benefit, but were adamant that the $100,000 that was transferred was not related to Dink Doink.

They do accept that Paul traded Dink Doink, but say he only made $17,000 (£13,400).

Puerto Rico

For several months, Paul refused to be interviewed by the BBC.

Then, unexpectedly, he agreed to talk to us at the boxing gym in Puerto Rico that he co-owns with his brother.

We sent Paul a list of the allegations we wanted him to respond to, and his PR team requested we travel to the Caribbean island, so he could answer in person.

They also insisted we flew into the island while it was being pummeled by Tropical Storm Ernesto, which had knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people.

At the gym, we noticed a strange atmosphere - with a suspicious number of his own cameras pointed at us. Paul’s assistant insisted our cameras should be recording from the moment the star entered the room, because of his strict schedule and timekeeping.

Then things became even stranger. Instead of Logan Paul, a lookalike arrived and sat down in front of our reporter, Matt Shea, and began impersonating the YouTuber.

We called him out and began complaining to Paul’s assistant, asking whether the real Logan Paul would be coming. At that moment, a group of people suddenly appeared, apparently from nowhere, wielding banners and shouting that the BBC were “paedophiles”.

We had flown all that way just to be trolled.

In the past few years, a number of celebrities have run into legal trouble for promoting crypto to followers without disclosing that they had vested interests.

Kim Kardashian was fined $1.26m (£1m) in 2022 for promoting a token called EthereumMax on her Instagram account.

According to Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the body policing the US investment industry, if a celebrity is promoting a particular crypto token, they are “supposed to tell you if they get paid, how much they get paid, whether they own the tokens, whether they made money on the tokens, whether they actually know something about the project”.

CryptoZoo

Logan Paul is now facing a lawsuit concerning his next venture in crypto - CryptoZoo.

This was marketed as an online trading card game, but instead of cards, CryptoZoo was to use NFTs (non-fungible tokens) - collectible pieces of digital art that can have a value of their own.

To play CryptoZoo, it was necessary to buy a cryptocurrency called Zoo Token, that could then be used to buy NFT “eggs”.

These eggs were supposed to eventually hatch into NFT “animals” that would breed and give birth to NFT “hybrid animals” with names like penguin-shark and panda-fin.

Paul’s team claimed these hybrid animals would somehow make participants money by passively generating more Zoo Tokens.

“It’s a really fun game that makes you money,” he told his audience shortly ahead of the launch in September 2021.

CryptoZoo attracted about $18.5m (£14.3m) in investment.

Rueben Tauk - a 21-year-old from north-east England - was among the Logan Paul fans who bought into CryptoZoo.

“I was really excited to be part of something that he was doing.”

However, the game was beset by problems from the moment it was released.

“We were given certain expectations about features that would be released,” Rueben told us. “A lot of the time those features wouldn’t work.

“After a certain point, you start to realise that something’s wrong.”

The value of the Zoo Tokens and the eggs started to plummet. Rueben says he personally lost £33,000.

At least 130 investors are now involved in a lawsuit against Paul (Rueben is not one of them). They claim they lost about $4.2m (£3.25m).

The lawyer behind the claim, Tom Kherkher - himself a popular YouTuber on legal affairs - says the failure to deliver the game forms only part of the case.

He says leaked messages reveal Paul and his team were involved in a “stealth launch” of the Zoo Tokens, allowing them to quietly buy in at a low price.

“The team appeared to agree that they can begin selling once the total value of all the Zoo Token in circulation hits $200m [£157m],” he says.

“If you had that document with that exact verbiage issued by a CEO of a publicly traded company, they would be charged with fraud in two seconds. That is insider trading.”

Paul has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing relating to CryptoZoo. Instead, he has laid the blame on other members of the team whom he also says failed to deliver the promised features.

Earlier this year, Paul announced a partial compensation scheme for disappointed investors. He promised to refund people who had bought the NFT eggs, but only if they agreed not sue him for anything relating to CryptoZoo.

Paul is also bringing a libel claim against one of his online detractors in the USA, for claims made about his motives.

Logan Paul’s immense popularity depends on his fans, and shows little sign of declining.

In recent years, Paul has turned his hand to boxing and wrestling, as well as launching the drinks company Prime, with British influencer KSI.

The product became notorious for its viral launch - with only a limited stocks made available, Prime spawned a re-sale market with bottles being advertised for hundreds of pounds. It was a testament to both Logan Paul and KSI’s influence over their primarily young audience.

However, for at least one fan, his image has been tarnished for good.

“Once you listen to someone and trust what they’re saying and they betray that trust,” says Rueben Tauk, “their words don’t mean anything to you any more.”

Additional reporting by Ben Milne and Daisy Bata


Uncertainty after Australia foreign students bill hits opposition

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gz84jy9ypo, today

Australia's debate over capping foreign student numbers is “not over” despite a controversial bill unexpectedly losing support, a top industry body says.

The bill, part of efforts to slash overall migration to Australia, had been opposed by most universities who say it would damage the higher education sector and its global reputation.

The government argued the legislation was needed to make the industry more sustainable and ease pressure on housing, and it was expected to easily pass with opposition support this week.

However in a surprise eleventh-hour move, Australia's opposition leader said his caol would vote against the bill as it didn't go far enough.

Though some universities have expressed support at the bill's apparent demise, they also say it extends the uncertainty surrounding the industry - which is worth about A$50bn (£25.7bn, $32.7bn) to the economy.

Luke Sheehy, head of Universities Australia, told the BBC the news brought "no sense of relief" for him.

"I just knew that we would be looking at international students [used] as cannon fodder in a phoney war on migration right through to the election now," said Mr Sheehy, whose organisation advocates for 39 universities.

The cap proposed limiting new enrolments at 270,000 for 2025 - a significant cut on the number in 2024. It had been due to come into effect in just six weeks.

Some universities have made job cuts and rejected student applications in anticipation of the new laws, and the BBC was told foreign students were already choosing to study elsewhere as a result of the reduced confidence in the sector.

The legislation, currently before the Senate, has not been formally withdrawn by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor government but it cannot pass without the support of the main opposition Liberal-National coalition or the Greens, who also oppose it.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton called the bill "a dog's breakfast" and vowed to introduce "deeper cuts" if he wins the upcoming election, due by May.

The Greens, on the other hand, described the bill "dog whistling that shamefully scapegoated international students for the housing crisis they did not cause".

The government has accused Mr Dutton of hypocrisy, arguing he has often talked "tough" on cutting immigration to the country, which has reached record levels in recent years.

The expected failure of the bill would mean an existing visa policy, which has been widely accused of exacerbating problems by funnelling most international students to a select few city-based universities, will remain in place.

The Group of Eight (Go8) - a body which represents Australia’s top ranked universities - said the bill would have hurt students and staff and that common sense had prevailed.

But the industry has been left scrambling again, with only a few months left until the 2025 academic year begins. Observers say some universities could now receive a spike in students when they had a expected a cut, and others - predominantly in regional locations - will no longer expect as many, putting them at greater financial pressure.

"The most devastating part of this discussion is that we still don't have a resolution," Mr Sheehy said.

"We're nowhere closer to providing the certainty, stability and growth the government promised us all those many months ago when they proposed caps."


Ford cuts 800 jobs claiming weak demand for electric cars

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20626dy9d6o, today

Ford has announced it will cut 800 jobs in the UK over the next three years.

The move is part of a major restructuring programme, which will see 4,000 posts closed across Europe as a whole.

The company said it had to act because of difficult trading conditions, including intense competition and weak demand for electric vehicles.

However, the cuts will not affect its manufacturing sites in Dagenham and Halewood, or its logistics base in Southampton. Ford said it hoped to make the majority of job cuts through voluntary redundancy.

“Making this announcement isn’t something that anybody wants to do, and I appreciate it will have a very significant impact on our employees,” said Lisa Brankin, managing director of Ford of Britain and Ireland.

“It’s not the news anyone wants to hear at any time. So our aim is to try to deliver this through voluntary redundancy."

Ford has 5,300 employees in the UK.

A government spokesperson told the BBC it has "asked the company to urgently share its full plans so we can help mitigate the impact in the UK".

The restructuring plan will remove 15% of its workforce. The majority of them are expected to be administrative or product development roles.

The company currently makes diesel engines for vans at its Dagenham factory in Essex.

It builds gearboxes in Halewood and is in the final stages of creating a major new facility for producing motors for electric vehicles on the site.

Both factories are being protected from the cuts, along with Ford’s transport operations division, which is based in Southampton.

However, six other sites across the UK could be affected, including a major research and development centre at Dunton in Essex, where it also has its UK headquarters, and a giant parts distribution centre in Daventry.

This is the second round of cuts to hit Ford’s operations in Britain in less than two years. In March 2023 it said 1,300 jobs were to go, a fifth of its workforce, most of them at the Dunton site.

The latest announcement comes at a time when car manufacturers across Europe are struggling.

Among the issues they face are high energy costs, weaker than expected demand for electric cars and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Many of the continent’s biggest names, including Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz and BMW have seen their profits tumble this year.

Volkswagen is even contemplating the closure of factories in Germany, a step that would be unprecedented.

“The automotive industry is going through a period of massive disruption at the moment,” explained Ms Brankin.

“We’ve got unprecedented competition, regulation and lots of economic headwinds”

Those pressures are hitting Ford at a difficult time. The carmaker is attempting to move away from its past as a mass-manufacturer of cheap "runabouts", and position itself as more upmarket brand, focused on electric cars. Last year, it stopped making the Fiesta after nearly five decades.

In addition to the cuts in the UK, Ford will be shedding 2,900 jobs in Germany and another 300 in the rest of Europe.

Meanwhile in Britain, the government is coming under intense pressure from the car industry over rules designed to force them to build more electric vehicles. The issue is due to be discussed at a meeting between industry and ministers on Wednesday afternoon.

Under the so-called Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, which came into force this year, at least 22% of cars sold must be classed as zero emission. If manufacturers fail to hit their quotas, they could face fines of up to £15,000 per car.

A number of carmakers are already struggling to meet their targets, although there are flexible mechanisms built into the rules which should allow them to avoid fines for the moment.

But the quota is due to rise to 28% next year, and to 33% in 2026 – being ramped up each year after that to hit 80% by 2030.

Manufacturers insist this is happening too fast. Although sales of new EVs are rising – with one in five cars sold in October being battery powered, they say this is misleading.

They claim demand for electric cars simply isn’t high enough yet, forcing them to offer unsustainable discounts in an effort to meet their targets.

Some are calling for the government to water down the quotas, in order to give them more time.

Others say it needs to offer greater taxpayer-funded incentives for electric cars, and to do more to reassure car buyers that enough charging infrastructure will be built.

But according to Vicky Read, chief executive of charging firm Charge UK a weakening of the mandate would be the wrong move.

"The government must hold its nerve and use the meeting to signal support for a policy that is evidently working," she said.

A government spokesperson said it is "determined to work in close partnership with industry as we implement the 2030 transition deadline".


Megaport opens up Latin America to Chinese trade as US looks on

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg79y3rz1eo, today

As the world waits to see how the return of Donald Trump will reshape relations between Washington and Beijing, China has just taken decisive action to entrench its position in Latin America.

Trump won the US presidential election on a platform that promised tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese-made goods. Further south, though, a new China-backed megaport has the potential to create whole new trade routes that will bypass North America entirely.

President Xi Jinping himself attended the inauguration of the Chancay port on the Peruvian coast this week, an indication of just how seriously China takes the development.

Xi was in Peru for the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (Apec). But all eyes were on Chancay and what it says about China's growing assertiveness in a region that the US has traditionally seen as its sphere of influence.

As seasoned observers see it, Washington is now paying the price for years of indifference towards its neighbours and their needs.

"The US has been absent from Latin America for so long, and China has moved in so rapidly, that things have really reconfigured in the past decade," says Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

"You have got the backyard of America engaging directly with China," she tells the BBC. "That's going to be problematic."

Even before it opened, the $3.5bn (£2.75bn) project, masterminded by China's state-owned Cosco Shipping, had already turned a once-sleepy Peruvian fishing town into a logistical powerhouse set to transform the country's economy.

China's official Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, called it "a vindication of China-Peru win-win co-operation".

Peru's President Dina Boluarte was similarly enthusiastic, describing the megaport as a "nerve centre" that would provide "a point of connection to access the gigantic Asian market".

But the implications go far beyond the fortunes of one small Andean nation. Once Chancay is fully up and running, goods from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and even Brazil are expected to pass through it on their way to Shanghai and other Asian ports.

China already has considerable appetite for the region's exports, including Brazilian soybeans and Chilean copper. Now this new port will be able to handle larger ships, as well as cutting shipping times from 35 to 23 days.

However, the new port will favour imports as well as exports. As signs grow that an influx of cheap Chinese goods bought online may be undermining domestic industry, Chile and Brazil have scrapped tax exemptions for individual customers on low-value foreign purchases.

As nervous US military hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can accommodate ultra-large container vessels, it can also handle Chinese warships.

The most strident warnings have come from Gen Laura Richardson, who has just retired as chief of US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

She has accused China of "playing the ‘long game’ with its development of dual-use sites and facilities throughout the region", adding that those sites could serve as "points of future multi-domain access for the [People's Liberation Army] and strategic naval chokepoints".

Even if that prospect never materialises, there is a strong perception that the US is losing ground in Latin America as China forges ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Outgoing US President Joe Biden was among the leaders at the Apec summit, on his first and last visit to South America during his four-year term. Media commentators remarked that he cut a diminished figure next to China's Xi.

Prof Álvaro Méndez, director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics, points out that while the US was taking Latin America for granted, Xi was visiting the region regularly and cultivating good relations.

"The bar has been set so low by the US that China only has to be a little bit better to get through the door," he says.

Of course, Latin America is not the only part of the world targeted by the BRI. Since 2023, China's unprecedented infrastructure splurge has pumped money into nearly 150 countries worldwide.

The results have not always been beneficial, with many projects left unfinished, while many developing countries that signed up for Beijing's largesse have found themselves burdened with debt as a result.

Even so, left-wing and right-wing governments alike have cast aside their initial suspicions of China, because "their interests are aligned" with those of Beijing, says the Peterson Institute's Ms de Bolle: "They have lowered their guard out of sheer necessity."

Ms de Bolle says the US is right to feel threatened by this turn of events, since Beijing has now established "a very strong foothold" in the region at a time when president-elect Trump wants to "rein in" China.

"I think we will finally start to see the US putting pressure on Latin America because of China," she says, adding that most countries want to stay on the right side of both big powers.

"The region doesn't have to choose unless it's put in a position where they are forced to, and that would be very dumb."

Looking ahead, South American countries such as Peru, Chile and Colombia would be vulnerable to pressure because of the bilateral free trade agreements they have with the US, which Trump could seek to renegotiate or even tear up.

They will be watching keenly to see what happens to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is up for review in July 2026, but will be subject to negotiations during 2025.

Whatever happens, Prof Méndez of the LSE feels that the region needs more co-operation.

"It shouldn't be that all roads lead to Beijing or to Washington. Latin America has to find a more strategic way, it needs a coherent regional strategy," he says, pointing to the difficulty of getting 33 countries to agree a joint approach.

Eric Farnsworth, vice-president at the Washington-based Council of the Americas, feels that there is still much goodwill towards the US in Latin America, but the region's "massive needs" are not being met by its northern neighbour.

"The US needs to up its game in the region, because people would choose it if there was a meaningful alternative to China," he tells the BBC.

Unlike many others, he sees some rays of hope from the incoming Trump administration, especially with the appointment of Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

"Rubio has a real sense of a need to engage economically with the Western Hemisphere in a way that we just haven't done for a number of years," he says.

But for successive US leaders, Latin America has been seen primarily in terms of illegal migration and illegal drugs. And with Trump fixated on plans to deport record numbers of immigrants, there is little indication that the US will change tack any time soon.

Like the rest of the world, Latin America is bracing itself for a bumpy four years - and if the US and China start a full-blown trade war, the region stands to get caught in the crossfire.


'The nicest place on the internet': How an Australian business is trying to transform mental health at work

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20241031-what-its-like-to-work-at-the-nicest-place-on-the-internet, today

Cherie Clonan, CEO of marketing agency The Digital Picnic, explains how perks like free dinners, burnout-preventing days off and even ADHD assessments have boosted employee wellbeing – and her bottom line.

If you walk into the offices of The Digital Picnic (TDP) in Melbourne, Australia, there's a high probability that that there won't be a single person there. While an empty office might not sound like the setting for one of Australia's most radically inclusive businesses, it's just one of many policies that has led to this small digital marketing agency being described by their clients as "the nicest place on the internet", according to Cherie Clonan, the company's founder and CEO.

At TDP, there are only six in-office days per month, on Mondays and Thursdays. The first week of each month is entirely work from home, with minimal meetings and nothing client-facing. If employees can't face even those few days in the office, they have the option to work remotely all the time.

"We just want to get the best out of people and not chip away at their soul in order to get that," Clonan tells the BBC.

Clonan, who was recently named Woman of the Year in the B&T Women in Media awards for her human-centred and inclusive approach to leadership, is firmly focussed on transforming workplace culture. As a proudly autistic leader, she has a unique lens on neuro-affirming work practices, centred around flexibility, empathy and accommodation, where the mental health of her team is a core focus.

"[Mental health] has never been more important," says Clonan, who explains her priority is to foster a culture where employees can be open about their mental health without fear of stigma or judgment. "I don't think we're actually well as a society, off the back of some pretty big years where it was all a lot for a long time. It's more important now than ever for organisational leaders to prioritise mental health beyond a cupcake once a year."

Mental health is increasingly being recognised as a crucial factor in workplace productivity and employee well-being. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health conditions like depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1tn (£780bn) annually in lost productivity. And psychological well-being is now a high priority for workers too. The American Psychological Association's 2023 Work in America Survey noted, for example, that 92% of employees surveyed said that it is "very" or "somewhat important" to them to work for an organisation that values their emotional and psychological well-being.

Despite this growing awareness, many workplaces still lack adequate support systems. This is especially true when it comes to employees who are neurodivergent, the umbrella term that includes conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and dyslexia. For these individuals, the everyday pressures of masking their cognitive differences in workplaces designed for neurotypical people can be overwhelming, and contributes to heightened rates of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout.

According to Nancy Doyle, chief science officer at Genius Within and visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, who specialises in neurodiversity and disability inclusion at work, it's vital that any trauma and burnout resulting from the workplace is seen as a systemic problem rather than individual failures. "We need to do more preventative work, looking at working conditions, hours, fair pay, sensory overwhelm, meaningful work, self-determination at work and relationships," she says.

With WHO noting that an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, there is a strong argument for businesses to rethink their approach to inclusion. In fact, according to WHO, every $1 (£0.78) invested in mental health returns $4 (£3.10) in productivity gains, making mental health support not just a moral obligation but a smart business decision, they say.

At TDP, policies are designed to allow individuals to thrive in a way that traditional workplaces might overlook. Some accommodations are simple. Their onboarding pack for new employees includes a pair of noise cancelling headphones to help avoid sensory overload when in the office, and the freezer has ready meals for any employee to eat or take home. As well as just six office days per month, work schedules are built around an individual's circadian rhythm, whether they prefer an early rise or can only manage an 11:00 start.

Other company policies are more radical, such as an employee benefit scheme that covers the cost of autism and ADHD assessments for any staff; as well as a paid day of "life leave" every month, on top of annual leave to compensate for the hyperfocus and resulting burnout that's common in neurodivergent people. There's a business commitment to promoting pregnant women ("I want people to know that they're safe to work here as a working parent," says Clonan) and a trans-positive inclusion policy with financial support for gender affirming surgery. Clonan has also overhauled their hiring and recruitment approach to be as inclusive as possible, including sending interview questions in advance.

While solutions and costs will vary for different businesses and workplaces, Clonan says that she sees these accommodations and policy changes as a necessary part of doing business – and that they cost no more than most workplaces spend on learning and development in a year. "I can see it in the profit and loss," she says. "I've learned that it's more expensive to have a workplace that's not inclusive then it is to have a workplace that is inclusive."

For example, Clonan says major policy costs at TPD include A$2,000-4,000 (£1,020-£2,040/ $1,312-$2,625) per person for an ASD or ADHD diagnosis; while for gender affirming surgery, it's a one-time payment of A$1,000 (£510/ $655) towards, five additional days of paid personal leave, A$500 (£255/$330) for administrative expenses and A$500 for a new clothing fund.

"We factor this into our budgets, seeing it as a short-term investment for long-term gain," says Clonan of the ROI, noting that the considerable cost of rehiring a role ("around A$33,000 (£16,815/$21,640)," she says) makes retaining talent a priority for her.

Doyle agrees inclusivity at work doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. "Some companies are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as it were. I'm working with companies right now to 'flip the cost model' and start with a needs-led approach to all employees, embedding the easy flexes into everyday onboarding, performance appraisal and talent management."

Clonan says TDP has grown from a tiny startup with just A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) in its bank account to a multi-million-dollar agency and maintained staff retention rates that surpass the industry average by an order of years, which she explains fairly simply. "Pay people well and treat them well. Surely [this] has to be the basic philosophy for business success."

Below, Clonan talks with the BBC about the benefits of normalising mental health and how business leaders can invest in creating a more inclusive workplace.

What are the mental health ramifications you've seen of not being welcomed and adapted to at work?

The digital marketing industry has a notorious reputation. It can be a toxic industry to work in. It can be dangerous, especially if you have an organisational leader who's profit over people at every touch point. In some agencies, there's no prioritisation of mental health whatsoever, and I'm seeing people either not make it in the industry at all, or if they do, it's not without hits and scars.

People need to radically understand themselves to bring their best selves to work. We use the Science of Leadership, which is a wheel where you can identify people sitting in the blue zone, which is happy, healed, constructive, doing their best work, living their best professional lives. That's pretty hard to achieve. Green is more like a people-pleasing zone. A lot of neurodivergent people sit there because it's our "fawn response" as a trauma response [to avoid conflict]. If they've been really hard done by in a particular workplace, they come in really red. That's a dangerous spot for them. They're angry burnt out, there's a lot of ego, they're scared, they're threatened. They're in fight, not flight.

We have to repeat it all the time: "You're safe here. We want your career to explode, and we can't do that if we've got this super fixed, scared, red, angry response to a lot of things. I need to know what you need so that this is a safe experience for you to work here." And that approach has been transformative.

What tangible benefits have you seen on your employees' mental health and your business?

Normalising mental health results in psychological safety and being neuroinclusive is good for business. In four years, we took this business from A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) to A$4m (£2m/$1.3m) in annual revenue, and that was through the worst time for our industry. We were looking at agencies who were walking 20 people out on one day through mass layoffs [during Covid-19], and quietly wondering, "What are we doing differently?"

 

Some of our staff have been here as long as we've been employing people, from 2018, and in our industry that is unheard of. If you don't care what chewing people up and spitting someone out does to a person, if all that matters to you is money, know that it costs A$33,000 to replace a chewed up and spat up person because it cost A$33,000 to make any new hire. So why wouldn't you try to commit to understanding mental health better and making any workplace a psychologically safe setting?

What are companies or leaders getting wrong when it comes to their neurodiverse workforce?

We need to represent neurodivergence beyond the ideas of "geniuses" or "increased productivity", because that is transactional rather than transformational.

To get that representation I need, firstly, neurodivergent folk within my company, and then I need to make a psychologically safe workplace for them so that they have a chance to grow here. When they grow, they're probably going to get promoted. And then I need to have some honest conversations about what more senior roles look like for them because some [neurodivergent people] have no desire to manage people. And for a lot of workplaces, that's almost always the outcome: We can't promote you if you're not managing a team.

But we need to get more creative and realise that not every person's path to growth is a promotion to management, unless they want to. And we simultaneously have to push back on this stereotypical idea that autistic people can't manage teams. If that's the case, why am I getting hit up every second week from people to learn from what I'm doing?

What advice would you give to another business leader looking to improve mental health in their workplace?

The best advice I can is to make sure that no accommodation is off the table. Next, invest in some training. Put leaders through mental health first aid and see if you can invest in different folks coming into your workplace to run keynotes on mental health and how it might present [at work].

Swallow your ego and recognise that you're going to make some mistakes before you get it right. I've made so many myself and that's an important, vulnerable feeling you have to sit with.

And finally, put people with an array of different lived experience in leadership positions. Homogenous workforces can be dangerous. In workplaces, you have to be able to look around and see yourself represented to feel safe.

-- 

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Palestinian olive harvest under threat from Israeli attacks and restrictions

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20gnvz1975o, today

On a Thursday afternoon towards the end of last month, a 59-year-old Palestinian woman set out to gather olives on her family’s land near the village of Faqqua, in the north of the occupied West Bank.

It was something that Hanan Abu Salameh had done for decades.

Within minutes, the mother of seven and grandmother of 14 lay dying in the dust of the olive grove, with a bullet wound in her chest - she’d been shot by an Israeli soldier.

Even though the family had co-ordinated their intention to pick olives with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to her son Fares and husband Hossam, the soldier fired several shots as other family members fled for cover.

The IDF says it’s investigating the incident, but Hanan’s grieving relatives have little hope or expectation that her killer will be brought to justice.

This wasn’t an isolated incident.

Harvesting olives is an age-old ritual and also an economic necessity for many Palestinians, but, according to the UN, it is increasingly precarious.

Farmers across the West Bank - internationally regarded as Palestinian land occupied by Israel - face heightened risks, like organised attacks by Israeli settlers seeking to sabotage the olive harvest, along with the use of force by Israeli security forces to block roads and Palestinians' access to their lands.

“Last year we couldn’t even harvest our olives, except for a very small amount,” says Omar Tanatara, a farmer from the village of Umm Safa.

“At one point, the army came, threw the olives we’d already gathered on the ground, and ordered us to go home,” says Omar, who is also a member of the village council.

“Some people were even shot at and olives trees were cut down with saws – that’s how we later found them,” adds Omar, as he and other villagers use small hand-held rakes to pull this year’s harvest from their remaining trees while they can.

Even when Israeli and international activists accompany villagers to their olive groves, hoping to deter the threat, there’s no guarantee of safety.

Zuraya Hadad instinctively winces as we watch a video of the incident in which her ribs were broken by a masked man wielding a large stick.

The Israeli peace activist had been helping Palestinian farmers pick their olives when she was assaulted without provocation.

Rather than arresting her attacker, Israeli soldiers, who’d accompanied settlers to the site, just told him to move on.

“Even when we come to help, it doesn't guarantee that the Palestinians can harvest their olives,” Zuraya tells me as she recovers from her injuries at home.

“We try to raise awareness, but in the end it's either the settlers steal the olives or cut the trees, or they remain unpicked and go to waste.”

Land is at the heart of the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians - who controls it and who has access to it.

For thousands of Palestinian families and villages, cultivating and harvesting olives is a big part of their economy.

But many say that, in recent times, access to trees on their land has been impeded, often violently by Israeli settlers.

Hundreds of trees - which can take years to reach fruit-bearing maturity - have been deliberately burned or cut down, says the UN.

More than 96,000 dunums (approximately 96 sq km; 37 sq miles) of olive groves in the West Bank also went uncultivated in 2023 because of Israeli restrictions on access for Palestinian farmers.

After being gathered by hand, villagers from Umm Safa take sacks full of olives to the nearby factory, where the presses have restarted this season.

Olives are the most important agricultural product in the West Bank. In a good year, they're worth more than $70m (£54m) to the Palestinian economy.

But income was well down last year and this year will be even worse, says factory owner Abd al-Rahman Khalifa, as even fewer farmers are able to harvest their crop owing to attacks by settlers.

“Let me give you an example,” he tells me.

“My brother-in-law in Lubban - next to the Israeli settlement - went to pick his own olives, but they broke his arms and they made him leave along with everyone who was with him.”

“We, as Palestinians, don’t have petrol or big companies. Our main agricultural crop is olives,” he adds. “So, like the Gulf depends on oil, and the Americans on business, our economy is dependent on the olive tree.”

On the hill overlooking the olive groves of Umm Safa stands an illegal settler outpost - a farm.

The extremist settler who runs it, Zvi Bar Yosef, was sanctioned this year by the UK and other Western governments for repeated acts of violence against Palestinians, including twice threatening families at gunpoint.

Over the last year of the war in Gaza, Jewish settlers have been emboldened by the support of far-right Israeli ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir.

As national security minister, he has given out free firearms to hundreds of settlers and has encouraged them to assert their right to what - they say - is their "God-given" land.

Ben-Gvir has also been accused of openly supporting the disruption of olive harvesting on Palestinian land.

At the olive press, farmers wait patiently in the yard to witness the transformation of the olives they’ve been able to gather this year into "liquid gold".

The olive tree has been a symbol of this land for centuries.

For generations of Palestinians, it is their link to the land - a link that is under threat now more than ever.


Trump selects financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9371zk1q6vo, today

Donald Trump has named investor Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of his transition team, to lead the US commerce department.

In his announcement, Trump said Lutnick, the chief executive of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, would spearhead the administration's "tariff and trade agenda".

Lutnick had also been in the running for treasury secretary, a more high-profile role.

Trump has yet to make a decision about that closely watched post, which has sweeping authority in areas such as economic and tax policy.

The fight over whom to pick has spilled into public view. Over the weekend, billionaire Elon Musk promoted Lutnick for the position and criticised one of the alternative candidates, Scott Bessent, as too "business as usual".

Lutnick, a self-described "strong capitalist", has praised Trump for offering a "competitive growth model".

During the campaign, he served as a spokesman for some of Trump's most controversial plans, including wide-ranging tariffs and the elimination of the income tax.

His embrace of those views put him out of step with some on Wall Street, which has historically seen tariffs as bad for corporate America.

Commerce is smaller than the treasury department, with a workforce of about 50,000 people.

It is a key player in areas where business and national security interests collide, such as restricting technology exports to China or enacting tariffs to protect US steel.

The department is also heavily involved in government efforts to boost domestic manufacturing and US companies.

Beyond its role in the US-China trade and tech war, its responsibilities include patent approvals, publishing economic data, and conducting the US census.

In the announcement, Trump called Lutnick a "dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years" and praised his transition work finding people to help staff the new administration.

He said Lutnick would also have special responsibility for the office of the US Trade Representative, which is not officially part of the Commerce department.

Who is Howard Lutnick?

Lutnick, a native of Long Island, New York, is a long-time Republican and supporter of Trump, with whom he overlapped in the New York social scene. He appeared on Trump's reality TV show, The Apprentice, in 2008, according to the online film and television database imdb.

He joined Cantor Fitzgerald right after his 1983 graduation from Haverford College, which he attended on scholarship. He lost both of his parents as a teenager - his mother to cancer and his father to a medical mistake.

Within 10 years, he rose to be president and chief executive of the firm. It is known today in part for its investments in crypto and its affiliate in the property industry, the Newmark brokerage.

Lutnick's public profile rose after the September 11 attacks, which killed more than 600 people working in the company’s offices that morning, including his brother. He was not at work because he was taking one of his children to kindergarten.

Lutnick, who speaks with a New York accent and is known for his blustery style, wept on TV in the days after.

Twenty years later, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said the day was a dividing line in his life, “before 9/11 and after” and for years following “it was still so raw it felt like yesterday”.


TV networks MSNBC and CNBC to be spun off by Comcast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn42p1m3jmno, today

US media giant Comcast is set to spin off its NBCUniversal cable television arm, as the industry continues to struggle with the emergence of streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The plan, formally announced on Wednesday, is to create a new company that will include channels such as MSNBC, CNBC, USA, E!, Syfy and the Golf Channel.

The networks are still profitable and generated a combined revenue of $7bn (£5.5bn) in the year to the end of September.

Comcast will keep the NBC broadcast television network, its film and television studios and its theme parks, as well as its Peacock streaming service.

Comcast said the aim was to complete the plan in about a year.

The expectation is that Comcast will be better placed for growth after the split from the cable networks, which have seen audiences decline.

Executives also said they believed the new company would be well-poised to buy other cable TV networks that could potentially go up for sale in the future.

The new firm will have the chairman of NBCUniversal's media group, Mark Lazarus, as its chief executive.

“We see a real opportunity to invest and build additional scale and I'm excited about the growth opportunities this transition will unlock," Mr Lazarus said in the announcement.

Comcast's president, Michael Cavanagh, first hinted at the plan during a call with investors last month.

At the time, Mr Cavanagh said he was exploring a strategy that could create "a new well-capitalised company owned by our shareholders and comprised of our strong portfolio of cable networks".

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in 2011 before the rise of streaming. At the time, its cable networks were seen as some of its most attractive businesses.

But a growing number of cable TV viewers have been cancelling their subscriptions and moving on to streaming platforms. Comcast said the brands to be included in the spin-off reached about 70 million US households.

Earlier this year, Warner Bros and Paramount Global cut billions of dollars from the valuation of their cable TV networks.

Comcast is the first major media company to officially make the move to carve up up its business.

Walt Disney has also considered spinning off its cable networks but ended up scrapping the plan.

Shares in Comcast were poised to open for trading in New York about 2% higher after the announcement.


Women plan UK legal action over talc cancer claims

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07ng47xv3go, today

Hundreds of women in the UK are planning to take on one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies over alleged links between talc and cancer.

Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021, Cassandra Wardle is one of the women launching a group action against the biggest seller of talcum powder, Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Cassandra, who stumbled on a Facebook article linking cancer and talc following her diagnosis, said it was used on her as a baby and she continued to use it "for 20 years or more".

"You mimic your mum who used it," she said. "Baby powder was supposed to be something deemed 'safe to use', even on a baby's bum."

If it proceeds, the legal action would be the first of its kind brought against the pharmaceutical multinational in the UK.

With 1,900 potential claimants, including cancer patients, survivors and families, lawyers say it is set to be the largest pharmaceutical product group action in English and Welsh legal history.

The BBC has spoken to a number of women with gynaecological cancers - many are part of the group action - who believe their repeated use of talcum powder played a part in their diagnosis.

Their lawyers allege that for decades, talcum powder was contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos - something they claim J&J was aware of but sought to suppress.

J&J denies suppressing any information and denies any links between its baby powder, asbestos and cancer.

"The doctors said the cancer was unusual for my age at 44," says Cassandra, from Alfreton in Derbyshire.

She says she would regularly use talcum powder after a bath or as a deodoriser, including across her genitals.

"I was just starting my chemo journey when I read about the links, but I felt enraged that a corporate giant like J&J could seem to do this," she says.

At first, doctors believed Cassandra's cancer was terminal.

"I went to the consultation alone," she says. "So I had to come home and tell my husband what they said, tell my parents they would be burying me.

"I closed down my business unit and laid off staff.

"I even created a not-so-creative acronym: 'LAC - Life After Cass'."

Then, she had an unexpected lifeline. Chemotherapy had in fact triggered an autoimmune condition, giving the impression of late-stage cancer.

Cassandra survived. But the disease still had a devastating effect on her life.

She was forced to give up her business, and an infection during chemotherapy damaged her vocal cords, reducing her voice to a whisper. A hysterectomy to remove cancerous tissue had a huge impact on her body.

"I was plunged into surgical menopause," she says.

"I would have liked children. I was never blessed that way, but my last ability to have children was taken away due to cancer."

Are there links between talcum powder and cancer?

The claims of links between talcum powder and cancer revolve around asbestos - a known carcinogen.

Talc is a mineral that is sometimes used in talcum powders and other cosmetic products, according to Cancer Research UK.

Sophia Lowes, from the charity, said: "[Talc] can be mined in places where there is asbestos, which can cause the talc to become contaminated. Asbestos is known to cause mesothelioma and cancers of the lung, larynx and ovary.

"The sale of products containing asbestos is banned in the UK and cosmetic products need to be safety-tested before they can be sold."

Many documents were hidden from public view until Americans with cancer began suing the firm.

J&J has been accused of knowing decades ago that its baby powder could contain contaminants of asbestos.

J&J has previously said that "any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false".

The company discontinued mineral-based talc in North America in 2020 - and followed suit in the UK last year - replacing it with cornstarch. J&J said this was due to financial pressures and a "misinformation campaign" around the product.

While the focus of the group action is on the contamination of talc with asbestos, in July this year the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that mineral talc itself was "probably carcinogenic for humans".

Deborah, who did not want to be identified by her real name, also lives in Derbyshire, and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 29, just two weeks after she and her husband had started trying for a baby.

"I used talcum powder for years as a teenager," she says.

"Literally all I had was some stabbing pain on a Sunday night. I went to the doctor and was sent for an ultrasound on the Tuesday."

During the scan, a tumour was found on Deborah's ovary. A few days later she had an operation, at which point doctors told her there was a risk the cancer had spread to her womb.

"Within two weeks of the first symptoms, I'd had a full hysterectomy," she says.

"I went from excitedly planning for a baby to having all of my parts removed."

Deborah's diagnosis was 30 years ago, and she and her husband ultimately went on to adopt.

But she still feels angry that she was robbed of the chance to conceive naturally.

"If [J&J] knew, they shouldn't have been doing it," she says.

KP Law, representing the claimants, has begun the process of litigation, which is expected to start at the beginning of 2025.

In the US, the firm has been sued by more than 62,000 people and at least $13bn has been paid out or set aside in response to the action.

Cases there have seen the company found liable for mesothelioma - an asbestos-specific cancer - and gynaecological cancers women suffered after using talc, with billions of dollars awarded in damages.

'Entirely transparent'

Tom Longstaff, a partner at KP Law, says: "The case has been litigated repeatedly in the American judicial system but women in the UK deserve an answer, and compensation, here.

"Asbestos cancers tend to have a latency of around 10 to 40 years. So we are walking into a wave of women reaching an age where asbestos cancers develop."

Mr Longstaff's firm sent a pre-action letter to J&J in September, a necessary step before starting proceedings. If the case goes ahead, it would likely end up in court next year.

In response, Erik Haas - worldwide vice-president of litigation for Johnson & Johnson, said the allegations against the company "defy logic, rewrite history and ignore the facts".

"J&J takes the issue of talc safety incredibly seriously and always has," he says.

"As our documents show, we have relied upon the most state-of-the-art testing protocols for decades and have been entirely transparent with government institutions and academic researchers regarding our findings."

Mr Haas also said the idea that J&J hid the contaminated contents of its products from the public, government and other groups was "inconceivable and false".

Litigation like this can take four or five years. Some of the women we spoke to fear they won't see it concluded.

Linda Jones has stage four cancer, which has reached her bones and blood.

"I don't have that long left. I might be dead by the time it's sorted out," the 66-year-old, from Devon, says.

"I loved [talcum powder]. After a bath at night, it was a great big warm hug putting on Johnson's baby powder.

"As soon as my children were born, I used it on them."

If she does get a settlement, she wants to help other women going through similar situations. She hopes to set up a holiday retreat for women diagnosed with gynaecological cancers.

"I just want to see them compensating everyone without a fight. We already had a fight in the States," she says.

A J&J spokesperson said: "As the history of the US talc litigation shows, the majority of cases tried resulted in defence verdicts or were overturned in favour of the defence on appeal.

"The UK judicial system is vastly different than in the US, and we believe that if a UK court has an opportunity to review the scientific literature and company documents in proper context, it too will conclude that Johnson's baby powder is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer."

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Jaguar unveils new logo ahead of electric relaunch

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr0pw00n7qo, today

Luxury car manufacturer Jaguar has unveiled a new logo and branding ahead of its relaunch as an electric-only brand.

The British vehicle maker, owned by Tata Motors, will launch three new electric cars in 2026, having taken new cars off sale more than a year ago to focus on reinventing the brand.

As part of its rebrand, Jaguar revealed a brand new logo on Tuesday, alongside a new prancing "leaper" cat design and marketing slogans such as "delete ordinary".

The new bespoke logo, written as JaGUar, has "seamlessly blended upper and lower case characters in visual harmony", the company said.

Jaguar, which has sites around the country including in Warwickshire, Coventry, Solihull and Castle Bromwich, announced its transition to electric vehicles in 2021.

Managing director Rawdon Glover said taking new cars off sale was "intentional" as it looked to create a barrier between the old models and the new Jaguar vehicles.

"We need to change people's perceptions of what Jaguar stands for," he said.

"And that's not a straightforward, easy thing to do. So having a fire break in between old and new is, actually, very helpful."

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) chief creative officer Gerry McGovern said Jaguar had "its roots in originality" and that its founder, Sir William Lyons, believed it "should be a copy of nothing."

The new Jaguar brand was "imaginative, bold and artistic" and "unique and fearless," he added.

The first car within the new brand would be a four-door GT built in Solihull, West Midlands, JLR previously said.

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What the farmers' protest tells us about their argument with the government

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62jdz61j3yo, today

The farmers' demonstration was best summed up in two images: real tractors being driven by farmers around Parliament Square, and beside them a collection of toy tractors being pedalled around by their children.

They illustrated the essence of the farmers’ argument: there is a deep-seated cultural expectation that they will pass on their farm to the next generation.

For many, it feels like a deep responsibility that stretches high into their family tree, and so the expectation falls upon them to ensure the very thing their forebears did for them they manage to as well – hand it down to their sons and daughters.

As a reporter, I love covering protests and marches at Westminster.

They are an essential megaphone in the never-ending conversation of our democracy.

I have been turning up at them with a microphone and camera for 20 years – to witness and scrutinise those making the most of their much-cherished right to come to London and – often – shout at the government.

I love them because people sufficiently passionate about their cause to trek to the capital and then make a public, almost certainly contentious, argument often deserve to be listened to and should be vigorously questioned too.

And, for me, those conversations offer an insight into not just what those protesting think, but why they think it.

This gathering of farmers left me with three thoughts:

Firstly, as we have already explored, there is the huge power of the cultural expectation of handing on a farm to the next generation.

It is not just a business, but an identity, a belonging, a geographical rootedness – and the prospect of not being able to pass it on generates huge anger and emotion.

That is a big part of the explanation for why this argument has got so noisy, so quickly.

Secondly, contested notions of fairness are so often central to the most contentious political arguments, and this one is no different.

The government argues existing inheritance tax isn’t fair or sustainable – as everyone else sufficiently well off to pay it is charged 40% and farmers are charged nothing.

Ministers also argue the exemptions have tempted rich folk to buy up farm land – pushing up its value – primarily to avoid inheritance tax.

And, as they are at pains to point out over and over again, they insist the vast majority of family farms will be unaffected and those that are will be charged 20%, half the rate charged to anyone else caught within its grasp.

Plus, they say, schools and hospitals desperately need more money.

Others say the farmers are a noisy, well-organised lobby group seeking to shield their often considerable wealth and perpetuate a privilege to the exclusion of others.

And all this brings us to the third big question here: what does it mean to be rich?

Talking to farmers, very quickly our conversation would often involve very big numbers - talk of assets running into a few million pounds.

These are huge figures that point to considerable wealth and yet the farmers insist, for two reasons, they are not rich.

Their annual income is often modest, they point out - and they don’t value their farm in numerical terms, but in emotional ones. The prospect of selling it horrifies them; handing it on is what they seek to do.

The farmers insist they are determined to press on with their campaign.

Ministers insist they are determined to press on with their plans for change.

You may choose to sympathise with the farmers’ arguments or not – or the government’s arguments, or not – but the protests offer an insight into what contributes to the view of many of the farmers, and why them backing down doesn’t seem likely any time soon.

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Thousands of postal workers in Canada strike over wages

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1542q49wzgo, today

More than 50,000 postal workers across Canada entered the fifth day of a labour strike over pay and working conditions, disrupting mail delivery ahead of the busy holiday season.

The union representing employees at Canada Post - the country's main postal operator - has said that negotiations remain “far apart” and are ongoing.

Workers are asking for a wage increase, and want the ability to work weekends with overtime pay instead of having Canada Post rely on outside contractors.

The operator, which has faced significant financial losses in recent years, has warned that the labour disruption “would affect millions of Canadians and businesses who rely on the postal service".

The work stoppage, which began on Friday, has halted mail and parcel services across the country, including the delivery of bank cards and statements, general mail, new passports and online shopping orders - all at a time when people across Canada are preparing and buying gifts for the holidays.

The Canadian government has since appointed a special mediator to help both sides reach an agreement.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and Canada Post entered a new round of mediated negotiations on Monday, but both sides have said they remain far away from reaching a deal.

The union wants a 24% pay increase over the next four years - higher than the 11.5% increase proposed by employer Canada Post. They are also negotiating issues around benefits, sick leave, job conditions and security.

“Our demands are reasonable: fair wages, safe working conditions, the right to retire with dignity and the expansion of services at the public post office,” the union has said.

Canada Post has warned that its services will be disrupted even if an agreement with its workers is reached, writing in a statement last week that “a national strike of any length will impact service to Canadians well after the strike activity ends".

It added that it has already felt an impact, with customers switching to private competitors or stopping use of its services altogether as the strike is ongoing.

The last time Canadian postal workers walked off the job was in October 2018. Back then, rotating strikes lasted more than a month before the federal government mandated that employees go back to work through legislation.

That job action cost Canada Post around C$135m ($96.7m; £76.27m).

The latest strike comes as the Crown corporation deals with big financial losses of C$3bn since 2016, primarily due to the fact that people are sending fewer letters than before.

Rivals like Amazon, FedEx and UPS have also taken a chunk of Canada Post’s business.

In its 2023 annual report, the operator said its financial situation is “unsustainable", and had projected that it will run out of cash unless it borrows C$1bn and refinances its existing debt.

“Canada Post is at a critical juncture in its history,” the report stated, adding that with mounting financial pressures, the publicly-owned mail operator is “under significant threat".


Google reacts angrily to report it will have to sell Chrome

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4g193qezno, today

Google has said it would harm consumers and businesses if it is forced to sell Chrome, the world's most popular web browser.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) will propose the measure to a judge on Wednesday, Bloomberg has reported.

Judge Amit Mehta ruled Google operates an online search monopoly in August, and has been considering what remedies or penalties to impose.

The DOJ has not commented on the report - but Google has made clear it is a proposal it opposes.

"The DOJ continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case," said Google executive Lee-Anne Mulholland in a statement.

Google will also reportedly be asked to establish new measures around its artificial intelligence, Android operating system and use of data.

"The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed,” Ms Mulholland added.

Chrome is the most used browser worldwide - with web traffic tracker Similarweb placing its global market share at 64.61% in October.

Meanwhile Google search corners an almost 90% share of the global search engine market as of October, according to Statcounter.

It is the default engine in Chrome as well as on many smartphone browsers, including Safari on iPhones.

Judge Mehta said in his ruling in August that the default search engine was "extremely valuable real estate" for Google.

"Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share," he wrote.

The DOJ had been expected to provide its final proposed remedies to the court by Wednesday.

It said in an October filing documenting initial proposals it would be considering seeking a break-up of Google.

Potential remedies "that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play [its app store], and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products" were among its considerations, it said then.

'Splitting off'


Popular weight-loss drug Wegovy goes on sale in China

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7487y7x0vwo, today

Novo Nordisk has launched its weight-loss drug Wegovy in China after it was approved by local health authorities in June.

It is set to intensify competition with rival Eli Lilly, whose popular weight-loss treatment also got the green light months ago but has yet to go on sale in the world's second largest pharmaceutical market.

More than 180 million people live with obesity in China, which has a population of 1.4 billion.

According to Chinese business news website Yicai, a dose of four Wegovy injections will cost 1,400 yuan (£153; $194), a fraction of the drug's price in the United States.

Yicai's report says patients in China will have to pay the full price for the treatment, as the drug has not been included in the national healthcare insurance.

Research suggests that Wegovy patients can lose more than 10% of their body weight.

In a post on Chinese app, WeChat, Novo Nordisk said its treatment "will provide a safe and effective weight loss option for overweight and obese patients in China".

Aimed at people who are severely overweight, Wegovy's active ingredient is a medicine called semaglutide, which helps control blood sugar, lowers appetite, and makes patients feel fuller. It is also the active ingredient in sister drug Ozempic, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes.

However, there can be side effects for some users, such as nausea and vomiting, and research shows that patients often put weight back on after stopping treatment.

Wegovy went on sale in the US in 2021 where a month's supply currently costs $1,349.

Fuelled by a social media buzz and celebrity users including Elon Musk, the drug has since been flying off pharmacy shelves around the world.

The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has asked doctors to be alert for patients who may be misusing obesity injections, such as Wegovy.

It followed reports that some people who were not obese became sick, after using the jabs for weight loss.

Wegovy's popularity has turned its maker, Novo Nordisk, into Europe's most valuable company. It currently has a total market value of of more than $440bn.


Chocolate makers stoke boom for Indian cocoa beans

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g03ln7z4o, today

If it hadn't been for the squirrels, George Matthew's attempt to become a cocoa bean producer might have failed.

His farming career began in the 1970s when he inherited a rubber plantation in the the southern Indian state of Kerala , which he managed alongside his career as a doctor.

It was a bad time to inherit a rubber plantation, falling rubber prices meant it kept losing money. So, 10 years ago Dr Matthew decided to experiment with cocoa trees, hoping they would generate some funds to support the rest of the farm.

He bought some saplings and planted them. It didn't go well.

"It was not that successful - most of the saplings died," he says.

Squirrels appeared to be making the situation worse by grabbing cocoa bean pods and eating them.

But those raids had an unexpected benefit - cocoa seeds were spread all over the farm.

"All the scattered seeds soon grew in to plants and they were much healthier and stronger than the saplings I had planted," says Dr Matthew.

"The trick was in sowing the seeds," he realised.

Today Mr Matthews has 6,000 cocoa trees on his 50 acres of land.

"I think it was the best decision I have made," he says.

To raise the quantity and quality of cocoa bean production, the government has introduced several initiatives.

It is investing in schemes to develop hybrid cocoa plants, that are more productive than existing varieties.

In addition there are schemes to train farmers on the latest techniques for growing and processing beans.

“There is a vast opportunity for Indian farmers to enter into cocoa cultivation and avail the benefits," says Dr Femina, who works in the government department tasked with developing cocoa production.

Business is also investing in new cocoa tree vareities.

Dr Minimol J.S., is the head of cocoa research at Kerala Agriculture University and is working with Cadbury to develop hybrid cocoa trees.

In the project's orchard existing high-performing varieties are cross-bred with exotic species.

So far the programme has come up with 15 new varieties.

"These are India's first hybrid, disease-resistant seeds," she says.

"The seeds are drought tolerant varieties, and have withstood temperatures of even 40C, which is usually not possible," she adds.

The hybrids are also much more productive than traditional varieties.

"The global average production is 0.25 kilogram per year per tree.

"In Kerala, we get 2.5 kilograms per year per tree. In Andhra and Telangana, we are even getting a yield of four or five kilograms per tree per year," she says.

India's production of cocoa beans has risen significantly. This year it hit 110,000 tonnes, up 40% from 2015. But it's still not enough to meet demand from local chocolate and confectionary makers.

India's Cocoa Board estimates the demand from industry is rising at 15% per year.

Founded in 2019, Kocoatrait is one of a new generation of Indian chocolate makers.

Based in the east coast city of Chennai, the company only uses Indian cocoa beans.

One reason for that is that locally sourced beans have a much smaller carbon footprint than beans that have been shipped from another continent.

In addition, says Kocoatrait founder Nitin Chordia, Indian beans are cheaper than imports and have a distinctive flavour.

Mr Chordia also runs an agricultural school, where farmers are shown the latest innovations in fermenting and drying beans.

"We are constantly focussing on improving the post-harvest practices for cocoa farmers in India," he says.

He adds that Indian farmers need to be producing higher quality beans.

"We are not able to compete with international players in the bulk cocoa bean segment,” he says.

While there has been improvement, Indian producers have some way to go.

"Over the last decade, in the fine-flavour cocoa bean segment, India has started to get noticed... but it will be several years before all Indian fine flavour cocoa beans reach a stage of large-scale international recognition."

Back in Kerala, Dr Matthew reflects on his decade as a cocoa farmer.

"It's a tricky plant," he says. "Last year I had no yield. So no farmer can depend solely on cocoa - one has to plant other trees along with it."

Despite the challenges, he's optimistic. "The future is bright, with huge demand."

"I have been approached by a multi-national company to sell my production to them, so I will be making a good profit.”


Seven-year-old gets job offer from Russian IT firm

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr91exlwd8o, today

A Russian software company has invited a seven-year-old coding prodigy to join its management team, as soon as he is old enough to take up paid employment.

Sergey from the Russian city of St Petersburg has built a name for himself, uploading videos that explain how to write software since he was five.

On the strength of those videos, the information security firm Pro32 sent him a written job offer, for the post of head of corporate training.

Under Russian law, Sergey would not be able to take up any paid role until he is 14.

But Pro32's chief executive Igor Mandik told the BBC World Service he had spoken to Sergey's parents about finding ways to collaborate in the meantime.

"His father, Kirill, was surprised and said that [they were] really happy and looking forward [to when] Sergey would be able to join the company," Mr Mandik said.

'A coding Mozart'

On his videos, Sergey appears fresh-faced and smiling enthusiastically. Speaking in Russian and sometimes in slightly broken English, he goes through coding challenges step-by-step.

His YouTube channel has more than 3,500 subscribers, interested in learning programming languages Python and Unity, or who want to hear more about neural networks, which underlie many artificial intelligence tools.

Sergey's father Kirill told the BBC that his son got into coding when observing his older sister learn about programming.

"At first, we studied the material together with the children to explain the basic principles to them. After a month, our help was no longer needed, and after two, Sergey was so carried away that he overtook everyone," he said.

Sergey also enjoys reading the Harry Potter books, chess and playing the piano, and plans to post videos of his musical performances online too, his father added.

Mr Mandik said Sergey showed not only remarkable developer skills but also "equally unique" skills in teaching.

"For me, he is kind of a Mozart.

"I'm absolutely sure that when he reaches 14, he'll be a guru of teaching and a guru of developing, and that is why we're really looking forward to this time," he said.

Not just coders, but salesmen, accountants and others at Moscow-based Pro32 could learn from Sergey, Mr Mandik said.

No promises have been made over pay, as yet, given that the going rate is likely to change significantly.

"We have to wait for seven years," Mr Mandik said. "Then we will definitely start a conversation about his salary."


British Airways says 'tech issue' resolved after delays

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej0z30yqzo, today

British Airways passengers were left stranded on the tarmac in multiple airports in the UK and internationally after a "technical issue" disrupted operations.

The problems, which the airline says have now been solved, started at around 17:00 on Monday, with passengers posting on social media that they were standing in the cold waiting to find out what was happening to their flights.

BA said a problem that affected some of its computer systems had caused the delays.

"We’ve apologised to customers for delays to their flights and ensured they were able to reach their destinations as planned," the airline said in a statement.

In an earlier update on the disruption, the company said no flights had been cancelled.

Downdetector, a website that logs complaints with websites that are not working, indicated a sharp increase in problems with the BA site after 17:00.

It is not clear how widespread the disruption was, but it was reported to have affected flights globally, as well as some domestic UK flights.

Travel expert and journalist Simon Calder estimated the problems could have affected tens of thousands of passengers, although the delays seemed to be limited to one or two hours for affected flights.

One passenger wrote on X that they were "being made to stand on the tarmac in a very cold Verona waiting for an already delayed flight".

Travellers in Hamburg, Naples, Lyon and Dusseldorf also reported delays.

Others said they were trying to check in for flights and the "systems are down" or that technical problems had prevented them from booking flights.

Sources within the airline suggest the situation is being brought under control, but there are concerns that delays this evening could have a knock-on effect on Tuesday's flights.

Some travellers commenting on social media said they had been told that pilots were unable to generate loading data for their aircraft and have been struggling to get through to colleagues by phone.

A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport said it was aware of the technical problems at BA, but that its own systems were operating normally.

It is not the first time BA has faced severe disruption due to an IT failure. In May last year, flights were grounded. A similar thing happened in spring 2017, disrupting Bank Holiday plans, and in February 2020.


German manufacturers warn of the sector's 'formidable crash'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5kpweqjzo, today

In the 44 years since Beckhoff Automation opened for business, owner Hans Beckhoff says he hasn’t seen an economic crisis like this one.

“You can usually expect a crisis about once every five to eight years,” says Mr Beckhoff. “This time it’s a formidable crash, a really deep one.”

A German company, Beckhoff Automation makes automated control systems for a wide range of industries, including manufacturing and the energy sector.

It belongs to Germany’s famous Mittelstand, the often highly specialised small and medium-sized enterprises that make up 99% of German companies, provide around 59% of German jobs, and are considered the “hidden champions” of the German economy.

The Mittelstand’s ability to take a long view on business performance rather than scrambling for annual dividends is part of what has made German manufacturing so robust. However, the global economy is shifting rapidly, and pressure is mounting.

“We're still doing well, though the economic situation has really slowed down," says Frederike Beckhoff, corporate development manager at Beckhoff Automation and Hans’ daughter. “This year's results won't be anywhere close to what we achieved over the past three years.”

German firms have been hit by a number of problems in recent years. These include the steep energy price hikes that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, rising general inflation, and increased competition from China.

Companies also complain about rundown German infrastructure, such as the country’s much criticised rail network, bridges and roads, all three of which state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle describes as “aging and crumbling”.

Other businesses highlight what they see as a heavy bureaucratic burden at both national and European levels, inconsistent government decision-making from Berlin, plus higher labour costs and staff shortages.

“The last three years have not been easy in Germany,” says Joachim Ley, chief executive at Ziehl-Abegg, a manufacturer of ventilation, air conditioning, and engineering systems.

“What we really need is reliable [government] decision making instead of 180-degree turns. Even if you don’t like decisions, you can at least plan and adjust if the decision is reliable. This back and forth is putting a lot of burden on companies in Germany.”

Germany’s coalition government fell apart earlier this month, and a general election is now set for 23 February, with a confidence vote before that on 16 December.

U-turns the government has made in recent years include walking back subsidy programmes for heat pumps and electric vehicles. This hit both domestic sales and net-zero targets. Berlin declined to comment.

But while political flip-flopping hasn’t helped German companies, many look to China as the key strain, especially on Germany’s carmakers, which have been hit by two problems.

Domestic demand for vehicles has cooled in China, and China now has a strong car industry of its own, with an aggressive export policy.

“Since the start of 2021, the Chinese export of electric vehicles has gone up by 1,150%,” says Dr Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank.

“That’s only EV [electric vehicles]. If you take all cars, including those running on fossil fuels, then you still get an increase of Chinese exports of 600%. During the same period, German exports increased by 60%. So there is obviously a shift in market shares happening here.”

The result of this is Volkswagen, Germany’s largest private-sector employer, threatening domestic plant closures for the first time in its 87-year history. It could result in tens of thousands of German job losses.

In October, the car manufacturer reported a 64% drop in third-quarter profits compared with a year earlier, primarily blaming a slump in demand from China, traditionally a key market for Germany’s premium car brands.

Mercedes-Benz reported a 54% decline over the same period, and BMW has also issued profit warnings, both also citing reduced Chinese orders.

Ms Beckhoff says that carmakers and the wider German manufacturing sector need to increase their competitiveness. “I really do think that productivity is something we have to take really seriously,” she says.

“The wealth we enjoy here in most parts of Germany and Europe, we can't take it for granted.”

German manufacturers that require low-cost margins may struggle, says Mr Ley, but he believes there is hope for high-quality products with innovative features that rely on world-class engineering and intellectual property.

Dr Klaus Günter Deutsch, head of industrial and economic policy research at the Federation of German Industries (BDI), believes “much will depend on whether we are able to pull the innovation levels much faster, better and more consistently across Europe”.

There is no doubt that job losses and restructuring on their home soil will be a painful process for German manufacturers such as Volkswagen, and chemicals firm BASF, which has also warned of cuts.

However, Mr Beckhoff believes this reality check may be healthy in the longer term. “I think it is good for German industry that Volkswagen is running into some problems because it will increase motivation,” he says.

“It’s finally understood that we really have to do something. What is it that Winston Churchill said? Never waste a good crisis!”

So while there is hope for a positive transformation in the manufacturing sector in the longer term, the shorter-term outlook will continue to be challenging. Whoever forms the next German government will have to make some difficult calls.

“I am still optimistic,” says economist Dr de la Rubia, who says that the need to upgrade Germany’s infrastructure is now “so obvious” that whoever forms the country’s next government will have to take action.

“I think they will say, ‘okay, the crisis is really there and now we will make a big leap’. That is my hope and my conviction.”

And many agree that this crisis may be just what Germany needs. In the post-war years, the country proved it had the capacity to produce an “economic miracle” against the odds.

The circumstances now may be different, but it’s not unthinkable that, with concerted action, it could do so again.


Spirit Airlines files for bankruptcy protection

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly209lyx3ro, today

US budget carrier Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy protection after a long run of financial losses and a series of failed merger attempts.

On Monday, the Florida-based airline said it had arranged an agreement to restructure its debt and raise money during a bankruptcy process that is expected to last until early 2025.

During that time, Spirit's operations will continue as normal and passengers will be unaffected, it said.

Spirit, which has not recorded a full-year profit since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, is the first US airline to file for bankruptcy in more than a decade. American Airlines declared bankruptcy in 2011 to cut labour costs during a period of high fuel prices.

In a statement, Spirit said the bankruptcy process - known as Chapter 11 - will not impact employee pay or payments to aircraft leasing companies.

The company will be de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange in the "near term" and stock shares will be cancelled, with no value, as part of its restructuring, Spirit said.

Despite strong demand, the no-frills airline posted losses of approximately $360m (£285m) in the first half of this year.

Competition in the budget travel market has been rising and Spirit has also been forced to ground aircraft as a result of mechanical issues with some engines, which drove up operating costs.

Earlier this year, Spirit's highly anticipated $3.8bn ($3bn) merger with another US carrier, JetBlue, collapsed. A Massachusetts judge blocked the deal, arguing that a merger would reduce competition in the market.

Another attempt to merge, with Frontier Airlines in 2022, fell apart after Spirit was outbid by JetBlue.

Originally a long-haul trucking company founded in 1964, which pivoted to aviation in the early 1980s, the firm rebranded as Spirit in 1992. It is considered a pioneer in budget flying, forgoing many amenities that are standard on other airlines in order to keep ticket prices low.


Atlas of cells transforms understanding of human body

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23829l8kzro, today

An ambitious plan to map all 37 trillion cells in the human body is transforming understanding of how our bodies work, scientists report.

The received wisdom said we were built from around 200 types of cell – such as heart muscle or nerve cells.

Instead the Human Cell Atlas project has revealed there are thousands of cell types, with some appearing to be culprits in diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and cystic fibrosis.

In a flurry of announcements, the formation of the human skeleton and the early immune system have also been mapped out in detail.

The novel insight is akin to moving from the maps of the 15th Century era of Joan of Arc and Richard III to what the phone in your pocket can load.

The old maps of the body had the equivalent of major roads and significant geography but also areas cartographers labelled unknown or “terra incognita”.

“[Now] it looks more like a Google map, you have a high resolution view and then on top of that you have the Street View that explains what’s going on, and then on top of that you can see the dynamic changes during the day when less cars are flowing or more cars are flowing,” said Dr Aviv Regev, one of the founders who now works at now at Genentech.

She added: “This is essential for us to understand and treat disease, cells are the basic unit of life, if things go wrong, they go wrong with our cells.”

Performing a feat of “human cartography” requires cutting-edge biology and computer science.

The project so far has looked at more than 100 million cells – deeply analysing each individual one - from 10,000 people around the world.

The journal Nature has now published a series of 40 scientific discoveries as researchers work towards creating the first draft of the whole human cell atlas.

“This is a major milestone that marks a great leap in understanding of the human body,” said Dr Sarah Teichmann, from the University of Cambridge and one of the founders of the Human Cell Atlas.

The latest discoveries include a map of the gut all the way from the mouth, down the oesphagus, into the stomach and intestines and out the anus.

Researchers looked at the types of cells, where they were located and how they chatted to the other cells around them.

Out of the 1.6 million cells analysed was a new form, called a gut metaplastic cell. It seems to play a role in exacerbating inflammation in the seven million people that live with inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

“We were able to uncover a pathogenic cell type that may play a role in some chronic conditions and could be a target for [drug] intervention in the future,” said Dr Rasa Elmentaite, who did the research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

There are more than 3,600 scientists across 100 countries collaborating on the Human Cell Atlas, which is one of the most ambitious projects in biology and has been described as the heir to the Human Genome Project to sequence the human genetic code.

Another discovery showed how the human skeleton forms in the womb in the weeks after conception.

First a scaffold of cartilage, like the wobbly bit on the end of your nose, forms. Then bone cells grow over it. This happens everywhere except for the very top of the skull to give the brain space to grow.

Some of the genetic instructions involved in orchestrating this early developmental process are the same ones implicated in osteoarthritis decades later.

“Ultimately, using this atlas could help us better understand the conditions of both the young and ageing skeleton,” said Dr Ken To, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

A similar study looked at the thymus – a small organ involved in training the immune system. Researchers showed this process started much earlier than previously thought suggesting the earliest stages of pregnancy could have an impact on immune function for life.

It also gives ideas for engineering new immune-cell-based therapies in the laboratory for fighting diseases such as a cancer.

Another example of the Human Cell Atlas in action came during the Covid pandemic when the detailed maps of the body allowed scientists to anticipate how the virus would move from tissue to tissue and identified the nose, mouth and eyes as key entry points to the body.

Dr Katrina Gold, from the Wellcome Trust medical research funder, said today’s announcements were a “true milestone for the Human Cell Atlas”.

“When complete, it could transform the ways we diagnose, monitor and treat diseases,” she said.


Social media ban for under-16s 'on the table' in UK

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9gpdrx829o, today

A possible ban on social media for under-16s in the UK is "on the table", the technology secretary Peter Kyle has told the BBC.

Speaking on the Today programme, on BBC Radio 4, he said he would "do what it takes" to keep people and in particular children safe online.

He also announced further research into the impact tech such as smartphones and social media was having on young people, claiming there was currently "no firm, peer-reviewed evidence".

Kyle has spelt out his priorities in what he called a "letter of strategic intent" to the regulator Ofcom, which is assuming extra powers under the Online Safety Act (OSA).

Campaign group the Molly Rose Foundation welcomed what it called an "important marker for Ofcom to be bolder" but said that should not obscure the fact that the OSA needed to be strengthened.

"Our research is clear. The public and parents back an updated Act that embeds an overarching duty of care on tech firms, and the Prime Minister must act quickly and decisively to deliver this unfinished job," it said in a post on X.

Aping Australia

The idea of legally restricting social media for young people has come into the spotlight after Australia's government said it would introduce legislation to ban children under 16 from social media.

Asked whether the UK would follow suit, Kyle said "everything is on the table with me", but said he wanted to see more evidence first.

He said he was also focused on making sure the powers contained in the OSA, which is coming into effect next year, were used "assertively" by the regulator.

"I just want to make sure that Ofcom knows that government expects them to be used," he told the BBC.

The OSA demands tech firms take more responsibility for the content on their platforms to protect children from some legal but harmful material.

Kyle said he wanted to see evidence that tech firms were delivering suitable age verification for users, and that the sector was moving towards having "safety baked in from the outset."

Social media and messaging platforms could face significant fines potentially measured in the billions if they do not comply with the OSA.

It has already led to a range of companies introducing significant changes to how they work - with Instagram creating new teen accounts in September, and Roblox banning young children from messaging others in November.

Nonetheless, critics have consistently said the government needs to do more.

The mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey told the BBC it did not go far enough in February.


Long Fatigue: The exhaustion that lingers after an infection

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241119-long-fatigue-the-exhaustion-that-lingers-after-an-infection, today

Before Long Covid there was post-viral fatigue – a mysterious set of illnesses caused by other infections. Now scientists are starting to unravel their secrets.

Since an acute infection with Covid-19 in the summer of 2023, Rachael Edwards has been battling a fatigue so crippling that it has left her bedridden for weeks at a time. A previously healthy 31-year-old marketing manager living in Amsterdam, she describes feeling like she is "weighted down by an anchor".

"Long Covid fatigue differs from the exhaustion of parenting newborns or long days at the office in a number of ways," says Edwards. "Imagine you've completed the hardest marathon of your life with poor sleep and no fuel. Then after the adrenaline has worn off, try walking up a flight of 100 stairs. That is how my body feels. My muscles won't move. I can't even hold my hand above my head," she says.

With the Covid-19 pandemic came long Covid, the lingering symptoms after an infection with the virus has cleared. Now it is long Covid which has opened a new window into the study of post-viral fatigue – a similar illness of persistent exhaustion which some people experience after recovering from other kinds of infection.

Post-viral fatigue has long been poorly understood, and for many years was often dismissed as psychological. But this long-term fatigue with varying degrees of severity has been linked to infections ranging from Sars to Ebola, Epstein-Barr virus and influenza, as well as infections with tick-borne pathogens such as the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease.

An enigmatic issue 

As a GP based in Aberdeen, Scotland, Rosalind Adam is familiar with seeing patients suffering from problematic fatigue. But over time, she has been increasingly struck by the generic nature of the term, and how we use this single phrase to encompass everything from everyday weariness to crippling energy deficits which leave people housebound and unable to work.

"I don't think we should think of fatigue as a single entity and I'd like to understand whether different patterns of fatigue respond differently to different approaches," says Adam.

As an academic researcher at the University of Aberdeen, Adam has launched a study of 40 people suffering from varying forms of problematic fatigue, from long Covid patients to those with heart failure or cancer. For the research, they were given digital sensors to track a variety of physical parameters from breathing rate to body temperature, sleep quality, heart activity and activity levels, along with an app to rate their physical and mental fatigue throughout the day.

The aim is to use AI to identify patterns in the data which might represent what Adam calls "fatiguotypes" – distinct traits which could be used to categorise subtypes of fatigue more accurately. She hopes that the findings could ultimately lead to more tailored clinical trials for fatigue, and potentially pave the way for new medicines.

A daily challenge

This kind of physiological shutdown is intrinsic to PEM where patients like Edwards find themselves locked into a state in which the tiniest overexertion can result in a crash which lasts for months and sometimes even years. Putrino believes that there are at least 10 different plausible explanations for why people develop PEM, which range from sleep disruption to hormonal impairments and inflammation of the lining of blood vessels. But at the heart of many of these theories are tubular, energy-creating structures called mitochondria which can be found in every single one of our cells.

When viruses invade our cells, they hijack mitochondria and leach some of the energy which is being generated for our benefit and use it to help them replicate and pump more virus through the body. "Now you have a cell that is working way over capacity to produce energy for both viral replication as well as the general functions it needs to perform," says Putrino.

According to Putrino, this means that while we're trying to recover from an infection, the body is also coping with what he calls an "energy debt", having been generating twice the customary amount of energy during the infection phase. One of the theories for why Sars-CoV-2 and other viruses can lead to PEM is because small amounts of virus can persist in parts of the body. As such, returning to normal activities before the body has recovered from its energy debt can causes a crash, during which time the virus can flare up or reactivate dormant viruses and induce further mitochondrial damage.

In other cases, the muscle weakness and physical impairments which many people with severe post-viral fatigue and PEM describe, are thought to be due to the initial infection inducing a state of autoimmunity, changing the behaviour of immune cells and triggering them to attack the very nerve fibres which enable muscles to contract. In Ebola disease survivors, severe autoimmunity has been shown to be connected to the symptoms of prolonged fatigue which many experience, while similar processes were also linked to the chronic fatigue and disability experienced by survivors of the Sars outbreak in the early 2000s.

"Viral infections may trigger long-term and persistent impairment in one's immune system," says Avik Roy, chief scientific officer at the non-profit Simmaron Research, which conducts research into the treatment of neuroimmune diseases. "Autoimmune responses due to the altered behaviour of immune cells such as T lymphocytes, natural killer cells and macrophages may cause damage in the myelin layer of peripheral nerves, resulting in muscle weakness and fatigue."

A third idea which Putrino and others have been studying, is related to impaired waste clearance. Working overtime means that mitochondria generate a lot of oxidative stress, yet the body is unable to adequately clear up after itself, because the immune system is in a state of prolonged exhaustion after battling the virus. This in itself may contribute to physical symptoms such as brain fog and muscle fatigue, impacting the ability to move and function normally. One study even showed that long Covid patients have an accumulation of toxic waste products in their muscle fibres.

Because of all this, an approach known as "pacing", by which patients attempt to slowly work their way back to normal levels of physical activity by progressively pushing themselves to do more and more, does not always work. In some Lyme disease, ME/CFS and long Covid patients, their underlying dysfunction means that pacing can actually make them worse.

"Long Covid patients need to achieve some improvement in functional status by virtue of medication before embarking on any form of graded exercise," says David Systrom, a pulmonologist at Brigham & Women's Hospital.

But finding the right medication involves identifying the underlying cause of their symptoms.

A possible solution

Over several decades of studying people with ME/CFS, Keller has heard the phrase "mitochondrial dysfunction" cited repeatedly as a possible cause of their prolonged fatigue. However, she says the key question is what is causing the mitochondria to be impaired.

In some cases of post-viral fatigue stemming from Ebola, Zika and influenza viruses, research has suggested that the cause is direct viral damage to mitochondria DNA. Studies delving into possible mechanisms have found that viral invasion can inhibit the production of phosphocreatine, a crucial chemical in the energy creation process. But there are other cases where mitochondria may simply be suffering from a lack of oxygen.

Sars-CoV-2 and other viruses appear to be capable of driving the formation of micro-clots, tiny particles which move through blood vessels entrapping various proteins and impairing oxygen flow, while in other cases, viral damage can affect normal heart rate, respiratory function and blood flow.

If the mitochondria can't get enough oxygen to function normally, Keller says that the body shifts to anaerobic energy production, a means of generating energy which is usually only required for short, intense bursts of activity such as sprinting at high speed. "When this shift towards anaerobic energy production occurs prematurely during low-level exertion, even simple activities of daily living will result in fatigue," says Keller.

At Mount Sinai, Putrino is now leading a clinical trial looking at whether an enzyme called lumbrokinase, which breaks down fibrin, a protein which is thought to be at the core of micro-clots, can help improve mitochondrial function and energy levels in long Covid and ME/CFS patients.

This is just one of an entire range of possible solutions being explored. In long Covid patients where viral persistence or reactivated viruses seem to be behind PEM, Putrino is exploring whether various repurposed HIV medications can help restore these infections to a dormant form. Simmaron Research along with the Mayo Clinic and the Center for Chronic Diseases, have launched a clinical trial of low-dose rapamycin in people with ME/CFS to see whether it can improve mitochondrial function and quality of life by stimulating a key bodily process called autophagy, encouraging cells to remove and recycle damaged components. "So far, the trial has produced very promising initial results," says Roy.

This wealth of research is also identifying supplements which may help people with less severe forms of post-viral fatigue recover more quickly in the wake of an infection. Coenzyme Q10, a compound used by mitochondria to generate energy which has been found to be depleted in ME/CFS patients, is now available over the counter in the US and the UK – it's regulated as a dietary supplement – and has been shown in some studies to reduce fatigue.

Keller says that this research is also helping to identify subgroups of people who seem to be more at risk of post-viral fatigue. She believes that people who already have underlying muscle or nerve tension due to lifestyle habits, chronic injuries or surgeries could be more vulnerable because these underlying factors will already be inhibiting oxygen delivery around the body.

"We've found that tension from frequent or prolonged sitting, or in the muscles of the neck, chest and shoulders due to excessive screen time, surfing on cell phones and low strength and endurance of the core muscles that support correct spinal alignment may be a contributing factor," she says. "Injuries or surgeries that cause scarring of the connective tissue such as C-section or breast reduction, may also contribute to this tension."

Putrino says it is vital that we get better at identifying the precise factors which can cause people to end up in a state of prolonged fatigue, as this will enable the development of better diagnostics and ultimately more targeted treatments aimed at various subgroups of individuals.

"There are many drivers, and it's naive to think that a single drug or a single intervention will address everything," Putrino says. "But as long as we're methodical in investigating potential target drugs, and understanding why they don't work in different people, then we stand a chance of getting more sophisticated combination drug trials within the next 12 to 24 months. That could lead to some real hope for people living with these infection-associated chronic conditions," he says.

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'God's influencer' to be made first millennial saint in April

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvzpxgzpnlo, today

A London-born teenager nicknamed "God's influencer" for his online skills will be made a saint in April.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 15, will be the first millennial - a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s - to be canonised by the Catholic church.

Pope Francis previously cleared the way for him to be made a saint by attributing a second miracle to him in May.

The teenager has also been labelled "the patron saint of the internet" for his work recording miracles online and running websites for Catholic organisations.

He was previously beatified - attributed his first miracle - in 2020, the healing of a Brazilian child diagnosed with a congenital disease.

Though Carlo Acutis was born in the UK, he died in Monza, in Italy, having spent much of his childhood there.

His body was moved to the town of Assisi a year after his death, and it currently resides on display alongside other relics linked to him.

Mr Acutis gained his nickname partly by designing websites for his parish and school, but he mainly became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle.

The website was launched online days before his death and has since been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world.

Miracles are typically investigated and assessed over a period of several months, with a person being eligible for sainthood after they have two to their name.

For something to be deemed a miracle it typically requires an act seen to be beyond what is possible in nature - such as through the sudden healing of a person deemed to be near-death.

The second miracle attributed to Mr Acutis came in 2024, when a university student in Florence was healed despite having bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.

Pope Francis told an audience at the Vatican that the teenager would be made a miracle during the weekend beginning 26 April.


Is SpaceX's Starship the loudest ever rocket?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230306-just-how-loud-is-a-rocket-launch, today

SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket is the largest to ever successfully leave the launchpad. The massive thrust needed to launch it creates a lot of noise – but is it the loudest rocket ever?

Watch footage of the Saturn V launches during Nasa's Apollo programme in the 1960s and 1970s, and one thing that may strike you – even more than the polyester-heavy fashions and retro haircuts – is just how far away the crowds of onlookers are from the main event.

There were several good reasons for this, and noise was one of them: loud sounds can kill, and few things built by humans have been as loud as the Saturn V.

When Apollo astronauts blasted off on their missions to the Moon, they did so with more than 3.2 miles (5.1km) separating them from the excited, onlooking crowds. Even at such distances, the noise was incredible. A common myth at the time was that the soundwaves from the Saturn V's engines were so powerful that they melted concrete on the launch pad and set fire to grass a mile (1.6km) away (both were false). 

Nasa's measurements at the time captured the launch noise at 204 decibels. Compare that to the sound of a jet airliner taking off, which is between 120 and 160 decibels and considered dangerous to hearing if endured for longer than 30 seconds. Even 1.5 miles (2.4km) away, the noise from a Saturn V launch was recorded as being 120 decibels – as loud as a rock concert, or a car horn at very close quarters.

"I'm always struck by the physicality of a launch," says Anthony Rue, a Florida café owner who has been watching and photographing launches since the days of Saturn V. "Back in the 1970s there was an audio device called Sensurround that was used in disaster movies like Earthquake to create a subsonic seismic 'experience' in the theatre.

"Launches, from up close, are a bit like Sensurround," says Rue. "You can feel a slight tremble, then a building rumble in your chest before you can hear any actual sound. The subsonic bass frequencies make your ears crackle. After a few seconds, the sound coalesces into a roar, like a massive welding torch."

Last year, a team of scientists from Brigham Young University in Utah calculated just how loud Saturn V was. They came up with a remarkably similar finding to Nasa's own recordings – 203 decibels.

The difference between 160 and 200-odd decibels might not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it is.

"One hundred and seventy decibels would be equivalent to 10 aircraft engines. Two hundred would be 10,000 engines," said Kent Gee, leader author of the study and professor of physics at the Brigham Young University at the time. "Every 10 decibels is an order-of-magnitude increase."

Was Saturn V the loudest rocket ever launched? Probably not, if you use thrust as your guide. The 35MN (meganewtons) of force produced by Saturn V at launch is less than that produced by the Soviet Union's ill-fated N1 rocket (45MN) which was supposed to have delivered cosmonauts to the lunar surface in the 1960s.

The 33 engines at the base of the Super Heavy booster on SpaceX's Starship – the largest rocket to ever take off – produce more than 74MN of thrust. On paper at least, it should be louder than anything launched before it. Certainly, it is pretty loud. Gee and his colleagues set up microphones at eight sites around the SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica during the fifth test flight in October 2024, when the Super Heavy booster also landed back on the launchpad for the first time. They found that during the launch, the rocket produced noise that reached more than 120dB more than 6.5 miles (10.5km) away. A sonic boom produced as the booster returned towards the launchpad generated almost 140dB at the same distance. 

The overall noise produced a Starship launch at that distance was equivalent to standing just 200ft (61m) from a large passenger aircraft such as a 747 or A380. Gee and his colleagues describe the sound produced by a rocket launch as low-frequency rumble with transitory crackles. The noise of the Starship launch set off car alarms in towns upto 10 miles (16km) away. 

While it is hard to know for sure how the noise produced by the Saturn V would have compared, it was certainly loud enough that there was more to consider than just the hearing of spectators. Rockets as powerful as Saturn V were capable of causing damage to themselves just from the soundwaves generated from the noise of their own launch.

Making sure that damage didn't happen preoccupied Nasa's rocket engineers even before the Apollo programme, says Nasa's John Blevins, chief engineer of the Space Launch System (SLS) used for the recent Artemis programme launch.

One solution: the fire trenches in the launch pad are filled with water which helps muffle some of the intense noise created when the rocket lifts off.

"There's a series of ground tests that we did back in the Apollo days, we did them again for Space Launch System," says Blevins, adding that Nasa also built smaller models of both the rocket and the pads to gauge how their interactions produced noise. "The maximum noise for the rocket itself, although you might not be able to tell if you're sitting at Banana Creek [a popular site for viewing launches], is actually about 150ft (45m) off the ground; the plume is spread out, instead of going down a hole that has the water in it, that helps attenuate some of that noise."

The water-filled fire trenches were also used for the Space Shuttle launch – the charismatic, boiling clouds of vapour seen in those famous old Nasa rocket launches are not in fact smoke, but steam from the water vaporising from the intense heat.

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The SLS is the new rocket used in the Artemis programme – the one planned to take humanity further into the Solar System than ever before. It became one of the most powerful rockets ever launched with 15% more thrust than Saturn V. As the SLS chief engineer, Blevins has watched – and heard – its five engines being ground tested at the John C Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. The ground tests are a critical step in a rocket design's progress, says Blevins.

"I'm about a half mile away, I've got earplugs in and for 600 seconds, this thing is producing just more steam than you can imagine. And when you can get that close, you see that's one engine out of four! And those produce less thrust than the two [solid rocket boosters] on the side.  

"It gives you an idea just how powerful these rockets are. It's just amazing."

Blevins says the SLS is designed to be quieter than Saturn V, but that noise levels are dependent on more than just the engine's thrust. 

"There's a lot of nuances to what the people hear," says Blevins. "Like a low cloudy day, like if you had a 1,000ft (330m) cloud ceiling, that noise will travel all the way across the state of Florida and just bounce back and forth. It really won't be easily attenuated and so people in Tampa will hear a rocket launch if you have a little overcast day." Tampa is three hours' drive away from the Kennedy Space Center, on the other side of the Florida peninsula.

A study by scientists at Brigham Young University and Rollins College in Florida studied recordings from the SLS during the Artemis 1 launch in November 2022 found it made more noise than pre-launch models had predicted. They found at 0.9 miles (1.5km) from the launchpad, the maximum noise level reached 136 decibels while at 3.2 miles (5.2km) it was 129 decibels. 

Whitney Coyle, a mathematician at Rollins College who studies acoustics and was one of those who examined the sound coming from the Artemis 1 launch, described the crackling sound the SLS produced as being "40 million times greater than a bowl of Rice Krispies".

Noisier rockets may be on the cards though. SpaceX's Starship vehicle – intended for a proposed mission to Mars – took off on top of the company's Super Heavy booster on its brief maiden flight on 20 April 2023 amid a huge plume of flame and smoke. Super Heavy can, according to SpaceX, generate nearly 76MN of thrust, more than twice that of Saturn V. SpaceX's engineers now have to figure out why the rocket underwent a mid-air "unscheduled disassembly" shortly after take-off before the giant rocket will fly again. But if you're planning on watching its next launch, earplugs sound like a very good idea.

* This article was originally published on 7 March 2023 but was updated on 19 November 2024 to include details from a study on SpaceX's Starship launch.

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How robotaxis are trying to win passengers' trust

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241115-how-robotaxis-are-trying-to-win-passengers-trust, today

Autonomous vehicles are already clocking up millions of miles on public roads, but they face an uphill battle to convince people to climb in to enjoy the ride.

A few weeks ago, I took a tour of San Francisco in one of Waymo's self-driving cars. As we drove around the city, one thing that struck me was how comfortable people had become with not seeing a driver. Not only were there multiple driverless vehicles on any given street at any given time, but tourists no longer had their mouths agape as one drove by. The technology has become a familiar sight.

Inside the vehicle itself, there were signs of how Waymo is trying to inspire a similar feeling among their passengers. The all-electric car offers a warm welcome to passengers by name and plays music as they climb inside. A screen positioned in front of the rear seats offers those along for the ride the option of seeing a follow-along map of the route, as well as settings for temperature and music. Another screen beside the steering wheel shows images of what's around the vehicle. As we drive, I can see people sitting inside buses alongside us, dogs crossing the street ahead and children skipping along the sidewalk.

Waymo wants you to see what the vehicle can – it wants you to trust it.

It is part of a wider trend within the autonomous ride-hailing industry. The technology allowing these self-driving vehicles to weave their way through busy city traffic is being used out there in a handful of cities around the world. What Waymo and its competitors need to do is to convince passengers to climb inside them.

Yet, research seems to suggest that the public in the US and the UK are reticent about riding in self-driving vehicles, with safety being among the most common concerns. A lot of it comes down to the trust people are willing to place in the technology and the companies that build the vehicles. But also there seems to be a higher bar when it comes to attitudes on the safety of autonomous vehicles compared to conventional cars.

For Waymo, the solution is to instill confidence in the robotic systems driving the vehicle.

"There is something very important about being able to know where the car is going, that the car sees what you're seeing," says Megan Neese, Waymo's head of product and customer research, from beside me during our tour of San Francisco. The company plans to keep the seats forward-facing with a steering wheel in its next generation car, she says. It's a familiar set-up in traditional taxis and that ability to see where the car is going helps people trust the car, she says.

Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, began offering robotaxi services in the US without a safety driver on board in 2020. It now provides 150,000 paid rides a week across San Francisco and Los Angeles in California, and Phoenix in Arizona.

In the grand scheme of ride-sharing, it is still small scale – Uber claims to facilitate around 200 million trips every week worldwide – but the market is growing.

It is also highly competitive. Ensuring passengers are at ease and comfortable is likely to be where much of the battle will be fought.

Amazon-backed Zoox, which plans to enter the market in 2025, is taking a different approach to gaining consumer trust. It aims to let passengers lose themselves in the ride by not seeing what's ahead or what the autonomous driver can see. 

Weeks after my Waymo ride-along, Zoox invited me to try their test vehicle at their Foster City headquarters outside of San Francisco on a prescribed course between two office buildings. Needless to say, it was a very different experience than riding Waymo in the wild, across a densely urban environment.

Zoox's offering is a purpose-built vehicle that is bi-directional, with no forward-facing or rear-facing windows. There is also no steering wheel, no pedals and no display screens to show the vehicle's surroundings. Instead, four seats face each other, bay seating-style. On either side there are sliding doors featuring large windows. A small screen next to each passenger allows them to personalise temperature controls and select music while a wireless charging pad sits on a flat divider between the seats. The vegan leather seats are dark green and the ceiling has twinkling lights set into it. It felt like a Disneyland ride.

To help gain consumer trust, Zoox has also begun publicly revealing details of its Fusion Center, where human operators can provide guidance to vehicle remotely to get it out of an unfamilar situation – which the company describes as a little like laying a path of digital breadcrumbs for it to follow. During testing, the company says its vehicles received remote guidance for 1% of the total driving time. 

Waymo previously did not talk publicly about its teleoperations centre, but earlier this year revealed it too has humans on hand to dial in to provide assistance. But rather than using remote drivers, Waymo's Fleet Response team answers questions from the autonomous vehicle about the choices it should make in ambiguous situations.

By comparison, General Motors-owned Cruise lost its permit to operate in California and had to pause operations after one of its vehicles dragged a pedestrian for 20ft (6m) after they were thrown into its path in October 2023. Since the incident, the company has been keen to highlight the layers of human support it uses with its vehicles. These include a team of fleet monitors, remote assistance and on-the-ground personnel to provide in-person assistance. Cruise says that prior to its operational pause last year, its vehicles connected to the remote assistance teams 3% of the time they were driving autonomously in urban environments, but that intervention wasn't necessary on all those occasions. The company says remote assistance provided "on-road support" for 0.6% of total autonomous driving time.

Cruise's chief executive and co-founders resigned a few months after the accident, while 900 other employees were laid off. The company has since resumed testing with safety drivers behind the wheel in Phoenix, Arizona and Dallas, Texas. It has also struck a multiyear deal to bring its cars onto the Uber platform.

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While self-driving taxis are being tested in many parts of the world, their deployment is most advanced in the US and China. Dozens of cities have approved trials of robotaxis on public roads in the US.

Waymo currently has the largest fleet in the US with more than 700 cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. It's the only paid robotaxi service in the US and is expected to start offering a service in Austin and Atlanta during 2025, in partnership with Uber.

Zoox eventually plans to offer rides in San Francisco, after months of testing on roads for its employees. Zoox is also testing in Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin and Miami.

Cruise has yet to announce when it may open up its service to the public and is currently continuing testing in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. Other autonomous services in development include Toyota-backed May Mobility, which has city-funded deployments across Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas. Meanwhile, Chinese robotaxi giants AutoX and WeRide have permits to operate in California.

China leads the world in terms of the number of autonomous vehicles being tested on the road. The authorities there say they have issued around 16,000 licences for self-driving cars and buses in more than 20 cities. In Beijing, 33 companies have been given the green light to conduct trials within a vast 1,160 sq mile (3,000 sq km) area, according to officials.

China's largest robotaxi operator is AutoX – backed by Chinese technology giant Alibaba – with a fleet of autonomous vehicles in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Baidu's Apollo Go – which operates fully driverless ride-hailing services in the cities of Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Chongqing – has been trying to win its customers over with low prices, sparking some complaints from local taxi drivers. Earlier this year, one of the company's driverless taxis collided with a pedestrian when they stepped into the road at some traffic lights. Although the person was not injured, it sparked questions about the technology's ability to deal with unexpected situations.

A spokesperson for Apollo Go insisted that safety of all road users was a top priority for the company and that its vehicles have accumulated more than 62 million miles (100 million kilometres) of autonomous driving in real-world situations without major accidents.

Apollo Go has faced other public perception problems, with mishaps involving its vehicles spreading quickly on social media in China. In one incident, a robotaxi caused a traffic jam after stopping for a plastic bag in the road, while on another occasion two autonomous vehicles became stuck in a polite standoff where they both tried to give way to the other.

The software that the cars run on, however, now has a "plastic bag misdetection" feature built into it, and Apollo Go says its sixth-generation robotaxis launched this year carry enhanced software and hardware.

Much like Waymo's robotaxis in the US, the Apollo Go vehicles feature a screen that shows a view of what the car's cameras can see or a map-like view with other road users detected by the car's sensors marked on it.

While passengers in only a handful of cities in China and the US are now able to hail robotaxis, testing of autonomous vehicles is taking place in many other parts of the world. Japan is getting ready for its first robotaxi deployment in Tokyo with Tier IV due to launch its service this month. May Mobility, which has been offering rides in a handful of locations around the US, also launched in Nagoya, Japan, in early November, but they still require a safety driver in the front seat. They appear to be targeting older people as the main market for an autonomous ride-hailing service. "Roughly one-third of Japan's population is aged 65 and older," says a spokesperson for May Mobility. "This has led to more retirees and more people needing transportation assistance, yet many transportation operators face hiring challenges. AVs can help the elderly and others have a reliable and safe option to get around town."

Pilots of autonomous vehicles have also started in Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

With the Autonomous Vehicles Act passing in the UK, robotaxis are expected to hit British roads by 2026. Croatian-startup Verne has partnered with Intel's Mobileye on a car with no steering wheel and seating for two, which is expected to rollout to 11 cities across the EU, UK and Middle East, including Manchester, England. One key feature it says it will introduce to its vehicle is a physical switch that customers can use to start and stop the ride. It is an attempt to give passengers a sense of control over the vehicle, the company says.

While it is clear that some people are willing to jump in a self-driving taxi as readily as a normal rideshare, winning over those who still have doubts will be essential for the gambles being taken on autonomous vehicles to pay off.

As the regulatory environment catches up with the technology in many parts of the world, convincing passengers in sufficient numbers to create the scale needed to turn a profit is still a challenge.

GM recently reported a $435m (£342m) loss on Cruise this quarter despite having paused operations for the past year.

Motional – a robotaxi firm partially backed by Hyundai Motor Group – reached 100,000 rides via the Uber and Lyft platforms in Las Vegas before the project was halted in May 2024 with sweeping layoffs. Karl Iagnemma, Motional's chief executive, acknowledged the challenges facing the industry. 

"Large-scale driverless deployment will not happen overnight," he says. "While we're excited by our pace of technical progress, and our initial commercial deployments have yielded valuable insights, large-scale deployment of AVs remains a goal for the future, not the present."

Waymo is also short of its stated goal of serving one million trips per day with 20,000 cars.

But new actors are still entering the robotaxi market, with Elon Musk's Tesla announcing its long-awaited Cybercab robotaxi. The vehicle will not have a steering wheel or pedals and is not expected to go into production until 2026. Prior to the announcement, however, Musk also announced that he intends to give Tesla owners the opportunity to rent out their own vehicles as autonomous taxis as early as late 2025, with testing already underway in the San Francisco area.

"For Tesla employees in the Bay Area, we already are offering ride-hailing capabilities," Musk said. "With the development app, you can request a ride, and it will take you anywhere in the Bay Area. We do have a safety driver for now." 

Regulatory approval for such a scheme, however, is far from guaranteed. As of November 2024, Tesla only holds a permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel in California. Musk, who now holds a position within President-Elect Donald Trump's administration, has said he is going to push for updated autonomous vehicle legislation.

Mary Barra, chief executive at GM, recently spoke of her own frustrations with the regulatory approvals system at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Federal road safety regulations, for example, require a steering wheel and airbags in cars.

"I personally had been working with policy makers to get legislative change, because you have to change Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard laws," Barra said. "And I've probably been working on it for six, seven years now."

But the biggest battleground in the robotaxi race may be winning public trust. With many different approaches on offer, it may be some time before the less adventurous paying passengers feel happy enough to sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Stressed? Writing down a to-do list might help

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241111-stressed-writing-down-a-to-do-list-might-help, today

If you find it hard to get to sleep, then a solution might be at hand – a pen and paper.

If you ever struggle to get to sleep, you might find that one of the things that keeps you awake is worrying about just how much you have to do the following day, especially if there are tasks that you've started, but not yet completed.

In a study of employees at a German IT company, those who had unfinished tasks left over at the end of the working week were more likely to think about their work problems over the weekend compared with those who were more or less on top of their workload. The researcher Christine Syrek from the University of Trier wrote that their results indicated that "the perception of not having completed the week's tasks furthers employee perseverative cognitions and impairs sleep on the weekend, even above and beyond the impact of time pressure".

Those with unfinished tasks were also more likely to find their sleep was disturbed over the weekend.

"Perseverative cognitions" are continuous thoughts about negative things that have happened in the past or might happen in the future. And they were also more likely to find their sleep was disturbed over the weekend.

Sunday nights can be particularly difficult. If you've had a lie-in that morning, you might not be as sleepy at bedtime as usual. Tomorrow it will be back to work and time to face all those undone tasks, along with some new ones, no doubt. So, what can you do to stop these whirring worries from keeping you awake?

You could count sheep. You could read a book for a while, taking yourself into a world far away from your worries. You could practise some mindfulness, concentrating on your breathing and the sensations you can detect around you. Or you could turn the light on and make a list of all those things you need to do.

Yes, that's right, I'm suggesting you deliberately bring to mind all the tasks you need to carry out and which are worrying you so much. And more than that, I'm suggesting you write them down. In black and white. You might think this is the last thing that would work, but  a study conducted in the US found it was surprisingly effective.

In fact, when Michael Scullin, director of the Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory at Baylor University in the US asked one group of volunteers to write a list just before bed of everything they'd achieved that day, and a second group to write a to-do list, all about the tasks they had to do complete tomorrow and in the next few days, it was this second group who subsequently fell asleep more quickly.

And how much quicker? Nine minutes, no less. The scientists didn't rely on the volunteers' own assessment of their sleep (which isn't always accurate), but confirmed when they were awake and asleep through a type of sleep study known as polysomnography. This involves attaching sensors to a person's head and to other parts of the body in order to monitor their brainwaves, breathing and movements.

Now it's fair to say that Scullin's study is not a large one, but there is a psychological mechanism which could explain why he got the results he did. It's called "cognitive offloading" and it happens when a person takes a physical action to relieve a mental load. 

If you turn a map around in order to make it match the street lay-out in front of you, that's an example of cognitive offloading. You are taking away some of the mental work you need to do to orientate yourself, thereby reducing the stress on your brain and making the task of going in the right direction a little easier.

In the case of the written to-do list at bedtime, you are downloading your tasks from your mind to a piece of paper (or a phone if you prefer and if you're sure you won't be lured onto social media or your emails) in a way that reduces the need for you to think about them when you're trying to get to sleep. And instead of having the tasks swirling around in your head randomly, they are put into some sort of order. They are "filed", as it were, ready to be dealt with in due course. As an added bonus you don't have to worry about forgetting them.

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It is best to list every specific task, rather than to use general headings, even though it will make your list longer. Professor Scullin's study found that busy people who created lists of more than 10 tasks fell asleep an average of 15 minutes faster than people who didn't write out to-do lists. They also fell asleep six minutes faster than those who only compiled short lists. So, make it comprehensive.

Doing all this might sound like hard work when you're tired and about to go to sleep. But it could be worth it. Writing out your to-do list just before turning in isn't going to make your life any less busy, but it might just help you to get sleep and to worry a little less. And when you get to tomorrow, you're already ahead because you have a list of everything you need to do.

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Are there health benefits to eating turmeric and other spices?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200406-are-there-benefits-to-eating-turmeric-and-other-spices, today

Chilli, turmeric and other spices are often claimed to have health benefits or even the ability to "boost our immune system". But can spices really add any health benefits to our food, or help us ward off illness?

Spices have been a part of our diets for thousands of years – it's second nature to sprinkle our chips with pepper, sip on ginger tea and add chillies to our meals. But recently, some spices have been unofficially promoted from everyday culinary staples to all-healing superfoods.

Hillary Clinton reportedly ate one chilli pepper a day while on the campaign trail in 2016 as an attempt to ward off illness. Turmeric, which has been used in Asia for millennia, has found its way into coffee shops around the world in the form of "golden lattes" – and, during the pandemic, into viral messages that claim it can "boost your immune system" and protect you from getting sick. It’s now, according to one celebrity chef, "everywhere".

Meanwhile, cayenne pepper still hasn’t recovered since the ill-advised "Beyoncé diet" back in 2013, which suggested consuming a concoction of cayenne pepper, maple syrup, lemon and water to lose weight. (Also see our story on whether "boosting" your immune system can really protect you).

But do spices really add any health benefits to our food, or help us ward off illness? And can any of them actually do us harm?  

The health benefits of chilli peppers

One of the most well known and widely used spices are chilli peppers. Many studies have examined their potential effects on our health – but have found both beneficial and adverse results.

Capsaicin is the main active ingredient in chillies. When we eat chillies, capsaicin molecules interact with the temperature receptors in our bodies, sending signals to the brain to create the feeling of heat.

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Some studies point to the idea that capsaicin may help you live longer.

One 2019 Italian study found that people who ate food seasoned with chilli peppers four times a week had a lower risk of death compared to those who never ate chillies. (Researchers controlled for lifestyle factors including smoking, exercise and overall diet quality.) And in 2015, researchers in China, who examined the chilli consumption and health of nearly 500,000 Chinese adults, found that eating chillies was associated with lower risk of death. Those who consumed spicy foods almost every day had a 14% lower risk of death than those who ate spicy foods less than once a week.

"The major findings were that higher intake of spicy foods is related to a lower risk of mortality, particularly deaths due to cancer, heart disease, and respiratory diseases," says researcher Lu Qi, professor of nutrition at Harvard's school of public health.

This does not, however, mean that starting to eat large quantities of chilli peppers will protect your health – or protect you from respiratory illness – in the short-term.

It's important to remember that the China study followed people for a median time of seven years each. So even if chillies had a protective effect on participants’ health, rather than the people who ate chillies happening to be healthier to begin with, the effect likely built up over time – not within weeks or months.

Qi tried to separate the effects of chilli consumption from everything else by controlling for age, sex, education level, marital status, diet and lifestyle factors including alcohol intake, smoking and physical activity. He says the lower risk of disease relating to eating chillies may be partly due to capsaicin.

"Certain ingredients in spicy foods, such as capsaicin, have been found to improve metabolic status, such as lipid profiles" – cholesterol in the blood – "and inflammation, and these may partly account for the observations in our study", says Qi.

A number of studies also have shown that capsaicin can increase the amount of energy we burn and can decrease our appetites.

Zumin Shi, associate professor at Qatar University's human nutrition department, has found that chilli consumption is associated with lower risk of obesity and is beneficial for high blood pressure. So when she studied the effects of chilli pepper consumption on cognitive function, she expected a hat trick.  

But when she measured Chinese adults' cognitive function against their chilli consumption, she found that people who ate more chillies had poorer cognitive function. This effect was strongest with memory: chilli intake above 50g (1.8oz) per day was associated with almost double the risk of self-reported poor memory. Still, it's worth noting that self-reported data is widely considered unreliable.

The burning sensation that comes with eating chillies has long fascinated scientists. It also gives us some insight into why chillies may be associated with cognitive decline: the sensation is the result of plants evolving to protect themselves against diseases and pests.

"While some plants have evolved to become bitter or spicy to predators, it’s better if the plant can make themselves toxic, too," says Kirsten Brandt, senior lecturer at the Human Nutrition Research Centre Population Health Sciences Institute at the UK's Newcastle University.

But these compounds generally have a smaller effect on us than on insects. "A little bit of toxin can be good, such as caffeine, which speeds up our metabolism so we feel more awake," she says. "However, a lot of it is bad for you."

The compounds that give spices their flavour aren’t harmful to humans, argues Duane Mellor, dietician and senior teaching fellow at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, UK.

"While a lot of the pigments and bitter flavours we tend to enjoy in foods are there to protect plants being eaten by insects, we've grown accustomed to these flavours’ toxicity levels – we can deal with a lot of these plant compounds, including tannins in black tea, whereas some species can't."

On the other hand, even if a compound within a certain spice may have beneficial effects, we normally don’t consume enough of it to make any difference.

Take polyphenols: the compounds found in many plants that have anti-inflammatory effects. Spices' health benefits are partly attributed to their high levels of these polyphenols. A 2014 review of research, however, says it's still unclear whether the small amount of these consume when eating spices limits their health benefits.

While some studies have produced encouraging findings, a 2022 analysis of 11 reviews concluded that the health effects of eating capsaicin and spicy food is unclear, nor is the evidence base "extremely high quality".

The health benefits of turmeric

Another popular spice that is widely regarded to have beneficial effects on human health is turmeric. This is widely attributed to curcumin. A small molecule found in turmeric, it is commonly used in alternative medicine to treat inflammation, stress and many other conditions.

Robust evidence for turmeric being beneficial, however, is lacking.

Numerous studies have found curcumin to have anti-cancer effects in the laboratory. But a lab environment is very different to the human body. And researchers say its bioavailability is too low for a normal serving to have any health benefits. This may be the case for other spices, too – although, some researchers have studied the health benefits of supplements that include higher doses of certain spices - and found promising results. For example, a 2023 study found that taking a daily ginger supplement can help to control inflammation in people with autoimmune diseases including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

In the Western world, this increasing interest in spices including turmeric as an alternative medicine was last seen in the Middle Ages, when spices were thought to have healing properties, says Paul Freedman, professor of history at Yale University.

"Spices were used to balance the properties of food. People thought of food as having hot, cold, moist and dry qualities, and they needed balance," says Freedman. Fish was considered cold and wet, for example, while spices were hot and dry.

The idea of using food as medicine, and of balancing out properties like hot and cold or wet and dry, also are main tenets of Ayurvedic medicine, which has been practised in India for thousands of years.

In many Western countries, where such ideas are much newer, "this idea of balance is shared with modern new-age medicine", Freedman says. "Our modern fascination with spices brings us closer to a medieval outlook than 50 years ago – when there was a wall between modern medicine like antibiotics and superstitious medicine of the past that didn’t work."

As part of her job, Kathryn Nelson, former research assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development, looked at molecules to see if they could be a compound for new drugs. She decided to study curcumin after she kept coming across the health claims associated with it.

"Researchers are able to exert effects in cells grown in test tubes by adding compounds to it and seeing what happens to the cells," she says.

But she found that curcumin is a "terrible" drug molecule, because it isn’t bio-available – meaning the body can’t make use of it once it's digested. It isn't easily absorbed by the small intestine, and its structure can be modified when it binds with proteins in the small and large intestines. As a result, it doesn't actually do much.

There could be something about turmeric that's beneficial, but it’s not curcumin, she says. Plus, if turmeric is cooked as part of a meal, she says, it's added alongside other foods, and heated up, so its chemical components change.

"There might be something else in turmeric worth looking at, but not curcumin, and it might not be one thing. It might need to be chemically modified or added to something to be beneficial."

She says consuming lots of turmeric isn't harmful, but she wouldn't advise using it as self-medication.

Correlation verses causation

Chilli and turmeric have been widely studied, but most trials have only compared data on consumption and different health outcomes, which doesn't separate cause from effect. And research done in laboratories doesn’t necessarily translate to the human body.

And as is true for so many nutritional studies, it's difficult to tease out correlation versus causation.

Take the 2019 Italian study finding that there was a lower risk of death associated with chilli consumption. It was observational, so it's impossible to know whether eating chilli made people live longer, whether already healthy people tend to consume more chilli, or if something else is at work.

One clue could, however, lie in how chillies are consumed by Italians and other Mediterranean cultures, says the study's author Marialaura Bonaccio, epidemiologist at Italy's Mediterranean Neurological Institute.

"Chilli is common in Mediterranean countries," says Bonaccio. "It's mostly eaten with pasta and legumes or vegetables."

This is just one example of how spices could be indirectly beneficial – they're eaten with legumes and vegetables.

Research also has found that adding a spice mix to burgers could potentially lead to fewer free radicals forming in a person's body than those who ate the burger without spices, and could make the meat less carcinogenic. But these benefits could be explained simply by the preservative qualities of the spices, says Mellor, who wasn't involved in the study.

"Putting spices into meat is a well-known technique to preserve meat," he says. "The benefits of spices, therefore, may be more food preservation, rather than them having direct benefits to us. But either way, we could benefit as it still makes the food less harmful to us."

Many researchers believe the health benefits of spices actually come from what we eat them with. For example, there's a tendency to use them to replace salt, says Lipi Roy, clinical assistant professor at the NYU Langone Health medical centre in New York. "Spices make food delicious and flavourful, and they can be a healthier alternative to salt," she says. In fact, last year, researchers proved that replacing salt and saturated fat with spices can actually make popular foods just as palatable. 

We also tend to eat chillies with vegetables – which of course benefits our health, too.

So while golden lattes won't do us any harm, we might be better off having some vegetables seasoned with a sprinkling of spices. And we certainly shouldn't rely on them as a way to ward off – or to fight – any kind of illness.

* This article was originally published on 6 April 2020. It was updated on 7 November 2024 to include recent research.

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Why coffee could be good for your health

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201028-the-benefits-of-coffee-is-coffee-good-for-health, today

In the past, coffee was associated with increased health risks. But research from the last decade finds that drinking coffee may actually benefit your health.

Caffeine is the most popular psychoactive drug in the world. Humans have been drinking coffee, a natural source of caffeine, for centuries, but there have been mixed messages around its effect on human health for decades.

"Traditionally, coffee has been seen as a bad thing," says Marc Gunter, professor of cancer epidemiology at Imperial College London and former head of the section of nutrition and metabolism at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). "Research from the 1980s and 90s concluded that people who drank coffee had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease – but it's evolved since then."

With more, larger-scale population studies emerging over the last decade, Gunter says, scientists now have data from hundreds of thousands of coffee-drinkers. But what does the research tell us – and is coffee consumption providing health benefits, or risks?

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Coffee has been associated with an increased risk of cancer because it contains acrylamide, a carcinogenic substance found in foods including toast, cakes and chips. However, the IARC concluded in 2016 that coffee is not carcinogenic, unless it's drunk very hot – above 65C (149F). In a 2023 review, researchers argue that, while coffee is one of the main sources of acrylamide in our diets, there is not yet a strong, conclusive evidence base showing that it relates to cancer risk. 

The potential health benefits of drinking coffee

Not only that, but more research has found that coffee may actually have a protective effect. Some studies have shown an association between coffee drinking and a lower risk of some cancers in patients, for example.

In 2017, Gunter published the results of a study that looked at the coffee-drinking habits of half a million people across Europe over a period of 16 years. Those who drank more coffee had a lower risk of dying from heart disease, stroke and cancer. These findings are consistent with research from other parts of the world, including the US, and more recent research in the UK.

Gunter says there's enough consensus across observational studies to confirm that people who drink up to four cups of coffee a day have fewer diseases compared to those who don't drink any.

The potential benefit of coffee could go further. Coffee-drinkers in Gunter's study were more likely to smoke and had unhealthier diets than non-coffee drinkers. This would suggest that if coffee does lower the risk of heart disease and cancer, it might be more powerful than we think – it's overriding the effects of unhealthy behaviours.

That's true whether it's a cup of decaffeinated or caffeinated coffee. Decaf coffee has similar amounts of antioxidants as normal coffee, research has found. Gunter hasn’t found in his research any differences between the health of people who drank caffeinated versus decaf, which led him to conclude that the health benefits associated with coffee are due to something other than caffeine.

Why we can't really know how coffee affects our health

However, all of this research was based on population data – which doesn’t confirm cause and effect.

People who consume coffee may simply have better underlying health than people who choose not to, says Peter Rogers, who studies the effects of caffeine on behaviour, mood, alertness and attention at the University of Bristol. That's in spite of their unhealthier lifestyle habits, as found in Gunter’s research.

"Some people suggested there might be a protective effect, which is somewhat controversial as it's based on population evidence," he says.

Meanwhile, people who consume coffee regularly often have higher blood pressure, which should increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. But, Rogers says, there isn't evidence that higher blood pressure from drinking coffee is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Clinical trials looking into coffee – which could better determine its benefits and risks – are rarer than population studies. But a group of researchers conducted one trial in which they observed the effects of drinking caffeinated coffee on blood sugar.

The small study, conducted by the Centre for Nutrition Exercise and Metabolism at England's University of Bath, looked at how coffee affects the body's response to breakfast after a fragmented night's sleep. They found that participants who drank coffee, followed by a sugary drink that stood in for breakfast, had a 50% increase in blood sugar, compared to when they didn't consume coffee before "breakfast".

Still, this kind of behaviour would have to happen repeatedly over time for the risk to accumulate.

Putting people into laboratory settings also brings up the question of how relevant the findings are to real life – indicating that neither population, or lab research can provide definitive answers on how coffee affects our health.

Can drinking coffee increase the risk of miscarriage?

Advice on caffeinated coffee consumption is particularly confusing in pregnancy. One 2022 review of studies found a link between coffee consumption before and during pregnancy and misscarriage. But the researchers say that, since they looked at population studies, there could be other explanations for the relationship they found between coffee consumption and pregnancy loss. For example, smoking is related to caffeine intake, they say, and is known to increase the risk of misscarriage.

Esther Myers, a dietician and chief executive of EF Myers Consulting, carried out a review of 380 studies and concluded that four cups of coffee per day for adults, and three for pregnant women, shouldn’t lead to any adverse effects.

However, the Food Standard Agency advises pregnant and breastfeeding women not to have more than one to two cups of coffee per day. A review of previous studies concluded that pregnant women should cut out coffee entirely to reduce the risk of miscarriage, low birth weight and stillbirth.

Emily Oster, an economist and author of the book Expecting Better, which explores the data around pregnancy recommendations, also found guidance around coffee to be inconsistent.

"The big concern is the possibility that caffeine consumption is linked to miscarriage, especially in the first three months," she says.

But, she says, there isn't much randomised data on this, and drawing conclusions from observational data isn't reliable.

"Women who drink coffee in pregnancy are likely to be older and are more likely to smoke. We know age and tobacco consumption are causally linked to higher rates of miscarriage," she says.

"The second issue is that women who are nauseous in early pregnancy are less likely to miscarry. These women also avoid coffee – it's the kind of thing that bothers you if you're already feeling sick – so a lot of women who are nauseous and aren’t consuming coffee are less likely to miscarry."

Two to four cups of coffee a day, Oster says, don't seem to be related to an increased risk of miscarriage.

What about caffeine addiction?

Aside from coffee's potential effects on heart health, cancer and miscarriage, there is how it influences the brain and nervous system. Caffeine is a psychoactive drug, which means it affects our cognition.

Within the general population, some people can drink caffeinated coffee all day long, while others become anxious after one cup. Studies have found that differences in our genes can affect how differently two people metabolise caffeine. But, Myers says, "we don't understand why one person is perfectly fine with a level of caffeine and another person is not".

For regular drinkers, meanwhile, there's bad news for those who drink coffee for a boost in concentration.

"As the body gets used to receiving caffeine on a daily basis, there are physiological changes that adapt the body to live with caffeine and maintain normal function," says Rogers. "Consuming coffee produces no net benefit to our ability to work efficiently because we become tolerant to that effect, but as long as you keep consuming it, you're probably not worse off."

The only people who stand to use caffeine to their advantage, he says, are those who don't drink it regularly.

At the other end of the spectrum, many people joke about being addicted to coffee. But in most cases, they're just dependent, says Rogers.

"There's a low risk of addiction to caffeine – if you take it away from someone, they don't feel great but they're not strongly craving it," he says.

Coffee, he says, demonstrates the difference between addiction, where there is a compulsion to get the drug, and dependence, where the user's cognitive performance is impaired, but they don't go to lengths to get it.

The only thing coffee-drinkers need to be aware of, he says, is withdrawal. "Anyone who drinks a few cups of coffee a day is dependent on caffeine. If you took their coffee away, they’d be tired and would maybe have a headache," Rogers says.

These symptoms depend on how much coffee the person was drinking, but they usually last between three days and a week, he says – in which time, caffeine is the only thing that will alleviate them.

Does the type of coffee matter?

The way you brew your coffee – whether lovingly crafting it from bean to cup or throwing some instant powder into a mug – doesn't seem to change the association with better health. By studying people across Europe, Gunter found that various types of coffee still were associated with health benefits.

"People drank a smaller espresso in Italy and Spain; in northern Europe, people drank larger volumes of coffee and more instant coffee," says Gunter. "We looked at different types of coffee and saw consistent results across counties, which suggests it’s not about types of coffee but coffee-drinking per se."

Still, researchers from a 2018 study found that the relationship between coffee and lifespan were stronger for ground coffee than for instant or decaf – although these were still found to be healthier than not drinking any coffee at all. The discrepancy, the paper states, could be because instant coffees have lower amounts of bioactive compounds, including polyphenols, which are known for their anti-inflammatory properties.

A 2021 population study found that all types of coffee – including decaffeinated, instant and ground – are associated with a decreased risk of chronic liver disease. However, in another study from 2022, researchers found that, while these three types of coffee were all linked to lower levels of cardiovascular disease and death, the strongest reduction in risk of death from all causes was seen with two to three cups of decaf coffee per day.

While it may not help you through a busy day at work, Gunter says the available, up-to-date evidence suggests that drinking up to four cups of coffee a day could have health benefits, including lower risk of heart disease and cancer.

"It's common sense that if you drink too much of anything it's probably not good for you, but there's no strong evidence that drinking a few cups a day is bad for health," he says. "If anything, it's the opposite."

* This article was originally published on 29 October 2020. It was updated on 6 November 2024 to include recent research.

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How online photos and videos alter the way you think

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241101-how-online-photos-and-videos-alter-the-way-you-think, today

The images we are exposed to on social media and internet websites have a surprising influence on the way we view the world.

Every day we are bombarded with digital images. They appear on our social media feeds, in our search results and the websites we browse. People send them to us via messaging apps or over email. By the end of today, billions more will have been uploaded and shared online.

With the average user spending 6 hours and 40 minutes per day on the internet, according to one report, these images make up a significant portion of our everyday visual input.

And, recent research indicates that they may even be influencing our perceptions.

One study published earlier this year analysed images on Google,Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database (IMBD), specifically looking at what genders predominated when they searched for different occupations – such as "farmer", "chief executive officer" or "TV reporter". The findings were stark. Although women were underrepresented overall, gender stereotypes were strong. Categories like "plumber", "developer", "investment banker" and "heart surgeon" were far more likely to be male. "Housekeeper", "nurse practitioner", "cheerleader" and "ballet dancer" tended to be female.

So far, so unsurprising. Anecdotally, I found the same phenomenon myself in 2019, when I was trying to find gender-balanced images for this website. Searching on Getty Creative, one of our main stock photo sites, I had found that photographs of male doctors outstripped female doctors by three to one – even though in the US, for example, physicians under 44 at the time were more likely to be female than male. This depiction of medical professionals were only part of the problem. There were twice as many options for photos of women with babies, or for that matter, of women with salads, as of men.

The latest study, however, took this a step further. Rather than just showing the extent of gender bias in online imagery, the researchers tested whether exposure to these images had any impact on people's own biases. In the experiment, 423 US participants used Google to search for different occupations. Two groups searched by text, using either Google or Google News; another group used Google Images, instead. (A control group also used Google, but to search for categories unrelated to occupations, like "apple" and "guitar"). Then all participants were given an "implicit association test", which measures implicit biases.

Compared to Googling text-based descriptions of occupations, the participants who used Google Images and received visual representations in response showed much higher rates of implicit gender bias after the experiment – both immediately after and three days later.

"The rise of images in popular internet culture may come at a critical social cost," the researchers write. "Our findings are especially alarming given that image-based social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are surging in popularity, accelerating the mass production and circulation of images. In parallel, popular search engines such as Google are increasingly incorporating images into their core functionality, for example, by including images as a default part of text-based searches."

There's another growing problem, too: how the images already circulating online are informing and shaping AI models. Earlier this year, I experimented with this myself. I asked ChatGPT to create images for me of dozens of various professionals: doctor, lawyer, scientist, comedian, poet, teacher, customer service representative, nutritionist, thought leader, CEO, expert. Except for two or three results – dental hygienist, nurse and housekeeper – it delivered, again and again, a man. And not just a man, but a slim white man around his 30s with a crop of flowing brown hair.

In a later attempt, trying to get away from career bias, I asked ChatGPT to come up with different sorts of people for me: someone "smart", someone "successful", someone watching an opera, someone watching the show Love Is Blind, someone who quit their job to take care of the kids. Once again, over and over, I got the white guy with the lustrous hair.

Obviously, models like ChatGPT are learning based on the imagery that already exists. But, once again, this may perpetuate a vicious cycle: the more biased images AI models themselves spit out, the more we see; the more we see, the more implicitly biased we become ourselves. And the more biased we become, the more we create and upload our own biased imagery. (Find out more about how gender biases shape our brains.)

So what can be done? A good deal of responsibility lies with the tech and AI companies. But even when their intentions are good, there doesn't seem to be an easy fix. In its attempt to correct for racial, gender and other biases, for example, Google's AI tool Gemini sometimes overcorrected – one image it generated of the US Founding Fathers included a black man, for example, while an image of German soldiers from World War Two featured a black man and an Asian woman.

In the meantime, we need to take control of shaping our digital visual world ourselves.

While it seems obvious, the fact that we can – to a certain extent – curate our social media feeds often goes overlooked. Seeking out accounts and influencers who are of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, or photographers from different parts of the world, is one easy, actionable tip. We can also influence the search results we get by altering the way we phrase the initial query.

The most effective strategy of all might be reclaiming our time. In the eponymous "digital detox plan" of art entrepreneur Marine Tanguy's book The Visual Detox: How to Consume Media Without Letting It Consume You, for example, there are no surprises, but some good, solid reminders – such as putting limits on when you look at a screen or your phone, deleting apps you aren't using, and spending time outside without technology.

I became aware recently that even my several-year-old phone has a timer you can switch on for various apps, choosing whatever time period per day you'd like. While I can't say that I've always heeded its warning when I hit my limit, it's helped me become much more aware of, and cut down on, my social media usage. As we have covered before, putting your phone in another room entirely seems to keep even the thought of checking it at bay. 

Above all else, however, it may be awareness that is key. We don't often think about our visual consumption or consider how often we're surrounded by images that have been deliberately created and served to us, often to persuade us to purchase something.

Nor do we think about just how strange and new a phenomenon that is. For the vast majority of human evolutionary history – some 99% of the time we have been around – we wouldn't have seen many images within our own natural environment at all, save some cave paintings or handmade sculptures. While, in Europe, the Renaissance ushered in a new era of image production – which saw the rise of art markets and of artworks made for popular consumption, like printmaking – people still wouldn't have seen anywhere near the number of man-made images that we see today.

In the more than 100,000 generations since the Homo branch of the evolutionary tree emerged, we have evolved to spend far more time looking at the world (and people) around us than at images, never mind images on a screen. Perhaps, it seems, there is an argument for trying to incorporate more of that time away from our screens into our everyday lives today.

*Amanda Ruggeri is an award-winning science and features journalist. She posts about expertise, media literacy and more on Instagram at @mandyruggeri.

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Daylight savings: What happens to baby sleep when the clocks change

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241101-daylight-savings-what-happens-to-baby-sleep-when-the-clocks-change, today

When the clocks go back for the winter after a summer of daylight savings, it can disrupt everyone's sleep for a few days. For tired parents, it can be an extra worry, but there are some tricks to help reset a child's rhythms.

A baby's sleep patterns can challenge parents on the best of days. It's small wonder, then, that with the clocks changing due to the end of daylight savings time  – and so shifting any hard-won schedule off by an hour – parents might be anxious about the effect on their children.

There is a growing body of scientific research on baby sleep which is helping to smash some of the myths that exist around it (you can read more about the science of baby sleep in this article). So, what does science have to tell families about how infants and toddlers might cope with the time change? And are there any tips to make the transition from summer to winter any easier?

First, it is true that for babies, as for adults, it can take time to adjust. "Even though the mechanical clocks change in an instant, body clock changes take time to implement," says Pamela Douglas, an Australian general practitioner, sleep researcher and founder of the Possums Sleep Intervention, an approach to parent-child sleep that has been adopted by health professionals around the world.

One analysis, for example, looked at how more than 600 children slept after clocks changed in the spring. It found that it took, on average, three days for toddlers between one and two years old to get back to their original bedtime – and eight days for infants under one.

The children's morning waking times also shifted. But for some age groups, on average, it was not by a full hour, meaning they got a little less sleep overall compared to before the clocks changed. The nighttime sleep of infants aged six to 11 months old was about seven to 15 minutes shorter even four weeks after the shift to daylight savings time, compared to before it. (For toddlers, total nighttime sleep returned to baseline after just a week).

Since researchers didn't track naptime, though, it's not clear if this meant a total loss of sleep over a 24-hour period – which is how medical sleep associations, including the US's National Sleep Foundation and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, structure their recommendations. Even if it did, seven to 15 minutes in 24 hours is still a fraction of the amount of sleep children should be getting overall. For infants aged four to 11 months, for example, the recommended range is 12 to 15 hours in 24.

It is also worth keeping in mind that sleep – even for infants – is flexible and adaptable. In fact, our preoccupation with strict, year-round sleep schedules for babies seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, and remains far from universal. Numerous ethnographic accounts of pre-industrial societies, for example, have found that babies and children normally either sleep with their caregivers (and go to bed when their caregivers do), or simply fall asleep in a caregiver's arms or in a sling wherever they are, whenever they're sleepy, including at social events.

Sleep practices can also vary by culture. In South Korea and Italy, for example, it is less common for children to be put to bed with comfort blankets, cuddly toys or pacifiers than in other Western European countries or the US. Korean children also tend tend to co-sleep with their parents rather than have a separate bed, while in Maya communities of Central America, children tend not to have a bedtime routine at all.

"There was not a separate routine to coax the babies to sleep," wrote the researchers behind a study on the bedtime practices of 14 Maya families in Guatemala. "Most of the babies simply fell asleep when sleepy, along with the rest of the family or before if they got tired."

For all of us, how much we sleep also seems to fluctuate with the seasons: in particular, we may be primed to sleep a bit more in the winter and less in the summer. Research on three foraging societies – which is generally considered as close as we can get to understanding how humans have slept for most of our evolutionary history – has found, for example, that nighttime sleep durations differ by nearly an hour from winter to summer.

"Sleep is strongly modulated by the seasons, averaging 53-56 min longer in the winter," the researchers write. This coincides, they note, with an up to two-hour increase in nighttime duration in the societies investigated.

In industrial societies, the impact of the changing seasons (and the environmental cues that come with it, like changing light and temperatures) is far less dramatic. Still, that doesn't mean there's no effect at all. One study of more than 2,600 medical school students in Berlin, for example, found that they slept about 18 minutes longer in winter than in summer. (Find out more about how the seasons alter our sleep.)

It isn't just how much we sleep that changes with the seasons – it's also how we sleep. This includes for babies over around 10 weeks of age. (Infants younger than that haven't yet developed the physiological functions that tell them daytime is for waking and nighttime is for sleeping).

Researchers have found, for example, that in the autumn, eight-month-old infants experience less fragmented sleep and more slow-wave sleep than they do in the spring. In a follow-up study that looked at both eight-month-olds and 24-month-olds, they also found more bursts of rhythmic brain activity that occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep, known as sleep spindle activity. It's likely, the researchers write, that this is a result of how springtime exposure to light "suppresses and delays melatonin secretion". Other research has found that seven-month-olds fall asleep earlier and experience less active sleep in winter than in summer.

More like this:

• The science of healthy baby sleep

• What really happens when babies are left to cry it out?

• The power of a parent's touch

For those of us heading into the winter, this may sound like good news for our child's health and wellbeing. But crucially, it's not clear exactly how, or whether, any of this impacts infants' development long-term. Research on how differing amounts of slow-wave sleep affects babies, for example, has come to mixed conclusions. One study found associations between slow-wave activity and psychomotor development in eight-month-olds, but it was not clear whether one led to the other, or if the two were simply correlated. Another study of six-month-olds found that the amount of slow-wave sleep they obtained had no link to any measures of behavioural development at 12 or 24 months of age.

So, from a developmental perspective, it doesn't seem like there's much reason to worry (or be excited) about the clocks shifting an hour – in either direction. But what about how to handle the schedule change as a family?

With clocks shifting back, as they are in the Northern Hemisphere, if a baby has been going to sleep at 16:00 and getting up at 7:00, the change will mean their body clock will want to go down at 15:00 and start the day at 6:00 – although, if the research is correct, they might also wind up sleeping 15 minutes or so longer.

For some families, this might be just the earlier times they've been hoping for. For others, it might take some a little encouragement to get back on schedule. "Parents will need to slowly nudge" the baby's bedtime later, Douglas says. "Some are more adaptable than others."

For parents who want to keep their child's sleep as regular as possible year-round, regardless of the seasons, it's also worth using light (and dark) – a key input for our circadian rhythm – to our advantage. Researchers suggest avoiding as much artificial and natural light as possible at night – for example, by using black-out blinds.

That's particularly true in the spring, when the days lengthen. For the clock change that happens in the autumn, you might just find that your baby, like many adults, winds up sleeping that much bit longer. At least, one can always hope.

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Animal robots give Gravesend a taste of the future

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dl3vvd6wgo, today

A day celebrating innovative ideas and technology has been held in a Kent town.

The Innovation Showcase took place in venues across Gravesend with experts from leading universities sharing their knowledge with the public.

One of the most popular exhibits on display were the Crawlybots - four-wheeled flexible robots with large LED eyes which can display animal characteristics.

John McKiernan, founder of Fourth Portal which organised the showcase, said the event gave "a glimpse into the future and how it can improve and affect everyone’s life in a positive way".

The use of robotics, AI, and improved research were discussed in a programme of free events with the aim of displaying the opportunities available to local people.

Andy Payne from Mechanismo Ltd, which designed the Crawlybots, said he was keen to encourage a new generation to combine science and art to create items that can be used in the future.

"The main reason we go out and do these things is to bring joy, enthuse and encourage people to play and explore with new technology," he said.

Many businesses along the High Street hosted events, including Julius Caesar Restaurant where a team from the University of Nottingham led by Dr Alan Chamberlain held a series of talks.

“I think it’s important to come to places such as this," said Dr Chamberlain. "It gives academics like myself the opportunity to talk to the general public to get their opinions on what’s important to them in regards to AI and robotics."

Emil Otto Munteanu, who is from Gravesend and studying computer science at the University of Nottingham, added: "It fills me with hope for the future to see the revitalisation of my town that has gone through so much, especially throughout the last few years.”

Volunteer Sabrina Ferrazza said she hoped the event would help turn North Kent into a technology hub, adding: "I hope Gravesend gets more opportunities to innovate and grow as a community."

Ann-Marie Langley, visiting from Maidstone, said it was great to see new technology in the area and "exciting to see where it can lead".

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AI cameras catch drivers on phone or without belts

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8dpvxexz8o, today

Thousands of motorists have been caught using their phone and not wearing seat belts after the launch of a new state-of-the-art AI camera system.

More than 3,200 people were captured using their mobiles while driving or not wearing seat belts over a five-week period in Greater Manchester.

Images captured by the ‘Heads Up’ camera system, show drivers holding mobile phones in front of their face, to their ear while behind the wheel, sometimes with passengers – including children – next to them.

Kate Green, Greater Manchester's deputy mayor, said she hoped the images were a "wake up call" to many.

She said the images, launched as part of a trial to understand the situation in the region, "speak for themselves".

The system recorded 812 drivers distracted by using mobile phones behind the wheel, and 2,393 incidents of seat belt non-compliance.

In several cases the cameras, which use a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human reviewers to detect offences, also found adult and child passengers not being securely fastened in their seats, or not wearing seat belts at all.

Dame Sarah Storey, active travel commissioner for Greater Manchester, said: “The results of the trial show the horrifying truth behind the number of drivers who still don't consider how their behaviour behind the wheel of their vehicle can affect themselves, their passengers and other people using the roads.

“Statistics show you are four times more likely to be involved in a collision if you use your phone while driving and twice as likely to die if you don't wear a seatbelt."

The findings, released in support of Greater Manchester’s Vision Zero Strategy and Action Plan to eliminate road deaths and life-changing injury by 2040, was held across the city-region throughout September and October.

No one has yet been prosecuted from the trial.

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Instagram testing tool that resets all recommended posts

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6vpy8e6jvo, today

Instagram is testing a new feature which allows people to completely remove all the content being recommended to them.

Its "reset" tool - which it says will be available globally "soon" - effectively cleanses a user's feed of content suggested by the site's algorithm, though Instagram says recommendations will "start to personalise again over time."

It comes as Instagram has announced a raft of new features aimed at improving the wellbeing of people on the platform, with safety features in October following new teen accounts launched in September.

The UK media regulator, Ofcom, welcomed the announcement - but said more action would be needed to make social media safe.

“It’s good to see Instagram bringing these changes in before regulation starts to bite, and we’ll be pressing for companies to do more to protect and empower their users," it said in a statement.

Tech firms have previously been warned they will need to "make very significant changes" ahead of the UK's new Online Safety Act (OSA) taking full effect.

"When the UK’s online safety laws are fully in force, the largest sites and apps will have to give people more control over what they see," the Ofcom statement added.

Some campaigners argue the OSA does not go far enough, and will need to be toughened or supplemented with other restrictions, for example on mobile phone use by young people.

There is also a fierce international debate on how to keep young people safe online, with Australia recently proposing banning social media for under-16s.

How to reset

Meta - which owns Instagram - says the new system will be available to everyone including those with teen accounts, and will let people to reset their recommendations "in just a few taps."

"We want to make sure everyone on Instagram – especially teens – has safe, positive, age-appropriate experiences and feels the time they’re spending on Instagram is valuable," Meta said in a blog post announcing the move.

Users who want to refresh their feeds will be able to select "reset suggested content" from their "content preferences" screen.

From there, they will be asked if they want to unfollow the accounts whose posts are shown to them most often.

At that point, users can then reset their feeds.

People who use Instagram can already have some impact on what is recommended to them by telling the algorithm whether they are interested in posts they see or not.

TikTok already has a similar feature, where people can reset their "For You" feed by following a few steps.

Instagram's move comes ahead of implementation of the Online Safety Act in December, which will set a ticking clock for tech firms.

Companies like Meta will have three months to assess the risks of illegal content appearing online, and will have to take steps to block it.

Separately, the regulator will finalise its Children's Safety codes of practice in April 2025, which is set to include a requirement for firms to give children more control over what they see in their feeds on social media platforms.


Roblox to ban young children from messaging others

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wrqg4vd2qo, today

Roblox has announced it will block under-13s from messaging others on the online gaming platform as part of new efforts to safeguard children.

Child users will not be able to send direct messages within games by default unless a verified parent or guardian gives them permission.

Parents will also be able to view and manage their child's account, including seeing their list of online friends, and setting daily limits on their play time.

Roblox is the most popular gaming platform for eight to 12 year olds in the UK, according to Ofcom research, but it has been urged to make its experiences safer for children.

The company said it would begin rolling out the changes from Monday, and they will be fully implemented by the end of March 2025.

It means young children will still be able to access public conversations seen by everyone in games - so they can still talk to their friends - but cannot have private conversations without parental consent.

Matt Kaufman, Roblox's chief safety officer, said the game is played by 88 million people each day, and over 10% of its total employees - equating to thousands of people - work on the platform's safety features.

"As our platform has grown in scale, we have always recognised that our approach to safety must evolve with it," he said.

Besides banning children from sending direct messages (DMs) across the platform, it will give parents more ways to easily see and manage their child's activity.

Parents and guardians must verify their identity and age with a form of government-issued ID or a credit card in order to access parental permissions for their child, via their own linked account.

But Mr Kaufman acknowledged identity verification is a challenge being faced by a lot of tech companies, and called on parents to make sure a child has the correct age on their account.

"Our goal is to keep all users safe, no matter what age they are," he said.

"We encourage parents to be working with their kids to create accounts and hopefully ensure that their kids are using their accurate age when they sign up."

Richard Collard, associate head of policy for child safety online at UK children's charity the NSPCC, called the changes “a positive step in the right direction".

But he said they need to be supported by effective ways of checking and verifying user age in order to "translate into safer experiences for children".

"Roblox must make this a priority to robustly tackle the harm taking place on their site and protect young children," he added.

Maturity guidlines

Roblox also announced it planned to simplify descriptions for content on the platform.

It is replacing age recommendations for certain games and experiences to "content labels" that simply outline the nature of the game.

It said this meant parents could make decisions based on the maturity of their child, rather than their age.

These range from "minimal", potentially including occasional mild violence or fear, to "restricted" - potentially containing more mature content such as strong violence, language or lots of realistic blood.

By default, Roblox users under the age of nine will only be able to access "minimal" or "mild" experiences - but parents can allow them to play "moderate" games by giving consent.

But users cannot access "restricted" games until they are at least 17-years-old and have used the platform's tools to verify their age.

It follows an announcement in November that Roblox would be barring under-13s from "social hangouts", where players can communicate with each other using text or voice messages, from Monday.

It also told developers that from 3 December, Roblox game creators would need to specify whether their games are suitable for children and block games for under-13s that do not provide this information.

The changes come as platforms accessed and used by children in the UK prepare to meet new rules around illegal and harmful material on their platforms under the Online Safety Act.

Ofcom, the UK watchdog enforcing the law, has warned that companies will face punishments if they fail to keep children safe on their platforms.

It will publish its codes of practice for companies to abide by in December.


Digital hub opens to train teachers in new tech

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c079x2z57j5o, today

A digital hub that aims to bring teachers up to speed with the latest technologies and create immersive learning experiences has opened.

Tresham College in Kettering, Northamptonshire, officially unveiled its Digital Innovation Hub this week.

The facility features virtual reality (VR) stations, augmented reality (AR) equipment, 3D printing machinery, robots and interactive displays.

Yiannis Koursis, chief executive of The Bedford College Group, said the hub would give teachers a "safe space" to learn the latest technologies.

"Teachers can experiment and learn different technologies to enhance the way we teach students," he said.

"It's things like being able to use VR and AR to look into the heart and how the heart is working, so it's really exciting."

The hub, which has been paid for through college reserves, will be managed by Mark Tinney, who will run workshops and sessions to show how the technologies can be used in lessons.

'An impact on teaching'

"One of the problems that a lot of schools and colleges have is spending a lot of money on buying equipment and [then] getting teachers to use it, and it having an impact on teaching," Mr Tinney said.

"Training them on how to use it isn’t enough; we've got to follow that through, and that's what this space is intended to do."

The innovation centre was developed in collaboration with Cisco, a company offering IT and consulting services.

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The world put the brakes on nuclear weapons. Is it time to do the same with fossil fuels?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241114-we-stopped-nukes-spreading-is-it-time-to-the-same-with-fossil-fuels, today

The fear of nuclear war forced nations to come together to stop the spread of atomic weapons. As the world confronts the reality of climate change, could a similar idea curb the use of fossil fuels?

Could we agree to stop using fossil fuels like we did nukes?

In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, Ireland's minister for external affairs Frank Aiken gave a powerful speech at the UN General Assembly in New York. He asked the question: "How can the course of history be turned away from death and towards life?" 

Aiken told world leaders that he believed the "growing destructiveness of modern weapons", particularly nuclear ones, demanded a legal solution and called for global negotiations to prevent their spread. 

Three years later, the Cuban Missile Crisis between the US and the Soviet Union put the world perilously close to a full-blown nuclear war. But intensive diplomacy by Aiken and others meant that by 1961 the UN had unanimously agreed that the proliferation of nuclear weapons was an urgent problem that had to be addressed.

The work of building a legal agreement had begun and in 1970 the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (commonly known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT) entered into force. A total of 191 states joined the treaty, including the five biggest holders of nuclear weapons: the US, USSR, UK, France and China. These five agreed not to give nuclear weapons to any another state and not to encourage others to develop them.

Humanity is now at another precarious point, teetering close to a rise of 1.5C in average global temperatures, which risks huge changes to human health and lives. In 2023, another Irish leader, former president Mary Robinson, warned that the world faced an "existential threat"; that year was confirmed as the hottest on record. This year is likely to be also.

But as world leaders and their diplomatic teams gather in Baku, Azerbaijan this week for COP29, nearly three decades of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have not succeeded in halting the emission of greenhouse gases. 

A key issue – the exploitation of fossil fuels that have caused the vast majority of human emissions – is still only a small part of the discussion. 

There is no mention of fossil fuels in the main text of the landmark Paris Agreement, which was finalised in 2015. It was not until last year's climate talks that nations took explicit aimat them, agreeing at last to "transition away" from coal, oil and gas. That fell far short of the phase out that many countries had hoped for, and even the weaker pledge has been downplayed by some governments as "optional". 

Fergus Green​, associate professor in political science at University College London, says this is the result of a deliberate strategy, primarily by large fossil fuel producers, to focus on greenhouse gas emissions rather than where they come from. The fossil fuel industry, which helped sow climate denial, has long been accused of influencing the talks through heavy lobbying. This year is no different; a secret recording at COP29 appears to show a senior official discussing potential fossil fuel deals.

There is still a huge disconnect between what governments are saying and doing. Recent and upcoming COP hosts Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates and Brazil are all planning major expansions in fossil fuels, according to research by the NGO Oil Change International. Even if the world is on an "unstoppable" shift towards renewable energy, the International Energy Agency says the global phase down of fossil fuels is not happening quickly enough. 

To try to address this, a growing coalition of governments, academics, lawyers and activists is pushing for a new global treaty to tackle the supply of fossil fuels head on.

The idea was born at the Pacific Islands Development Forum, where Pacific Island leaders initially called for "a new global dialogue" on a moratorium on fossil fuels. In 2016, island leaders met to discuss a new treaty that "could form a new source of international law". The concept was reinvigorated three years later by a journal article written by researchers Peter Newell and Andrew Simms of the University of Sussex in the UK.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as it has become known, is modelled on its nuclear cousin. It seeks to end new exploration and production of coal, oil and gas, phase out existing stockpiles, speed up the transfer of clean energy technology to poorer nations, enable a just transition for workers and communities, and help countries still dependent on fossil fuels diversify their economies.

"When we first launched, there was an impression that we don't believe in [the Paris Agreement], we don't believe in the UNFCCC," says Amiera Sawas, head of research and policy at the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

"But that's not true. We just realise that it's taken 28 years to get fossil fuels into the text. We have a limited carbon budget, limited time to deliver and, although there is progress, we can't deny that certain goals are being missed," says Sawas.

She refers in particular to national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions that still fall well short of what is needed to keep average warming under 1.5C and have been criticised for excessive reliance on technologies that do not yet exist at scale. Many poorer countries are also wary of a long-promised $100bn (£77.3bn) in annual climate finance that the OECD says was finally delivered in 2022, but relies heavily on loans and "relabelled" aid.

Susi Snyder, programme coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican), believes a fossil fuel treaty could play an important role in shifting the political and legal landscape on climate change. But she thinks it should be modelled less on the NPT and more on a successor agreement called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). 

Snyder says progress under the NPT had stalled by 2010, with governments pledging to take nuclear weapons out of their policies but in reality "doing the opposite". The TPNW, which states went on to negotiate, entered into force in 2021, completely prohibiting nuclear weapons among its members. It already has half the UN on board.

Jochen von Bernstorff, professor of constitutional and public international law and Human Rights at the University of Tübingen in Germany, says a fossil fuel treaty could be the latest in a line of "rebellious" treaties that seek to build on earlier multilateral agreements, but also challenge and further them. Other examples include the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and a World Health Organization pandemic treaty that is currently being negotiated.

Bernstorff describes these treaties as a "creative response" to a stalemate caused by "powerful states defending the legal and political status quo".

Getting the right buy-in from states would be essential to passing and enforcing such a treaty on fossil fuels. 

The initiative has hundreds of endorsements from cities, sub-national governments and Indigenous nations, from Vancouver in Canada to the Awajún people in Peru. It also has support from the World Health Organization, the European Parliament and the Vatican, and thousands of scientists and academics.

However, only a handful of states have explicitly said they will support it. These are largely island nations that are highly vulnerable to climate change but are very small greenhouse gas emitters. One notable exception is Colombia, which was the first major fossil fuel producer to endorse the idea in December 2023.

A threshold of around 50 states would be needed to make such a treaty work, suggests Von Bernstorff. "If you have more than 50, other states take it seriously, other institutions take it seriously – especially if it keeps on growing." He notes that two nuclear-armed states – France and China – did not join the NPT until the 1990s, many decades after it was first agreed.

Von Bernstorff adds that the support of Western public authorities is important because it puts extra pressure on others to react. Norway was one state that lent its support for the TPNW relatively early on. "Later, because of the pressure from the other Nato states, Norway dropped out, but by then [the treaty] already had a critical mass," he says.

Sawas says her team is having conversations with new countries about endorsing the fossil fuel treaty "all the time", even with other fossil fuel producers. "The message we're hearing is that, largely, they want to phase out fossil fuels [but] they need to feel that there are others willing to support them."

Getting them on board will not be easy and there are risks for states that put their head above the parapet. Susana Muhamad, Colombia's environment minister, said her country's credit rating was downgraded after it announced a halt in fossil fuel exploration a year prior to endorsing the treaty. 

Green, who has provided unpaid informal advice to the initiative, is sceptical that large fossil fuel producers would sign up and says the reality of negotiating a treaty could involve uncomfortable trade-offs.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty initiative, acknowledges that developing nations have lost trust in UN negotiations. "That makes it very challenging to convince these countries that we need to have another multilateral process to achieve justice," says Singh.

He hopes to rebuild that trust through diverse civil society representation and engagement. The initiative has held consultations covering key subjects such as health, faith, gender and human rights to help shape a set of principles that underlies its work.

The team behind the initiative is spread around the world, and it has a network of around 3,000 organisations at grassroots, national and international levels. Omar Elmawi, for example, has endorsed the treaty on behalf of the deCOALonize campaign he co-founded in Kenya and is now one of its African champions. He believes the initiative is thoughtful and strategic, and is pleased that it has so much support from the Global South. "I knew the world leaders by themselves would not work on a treaty to stop coal, oil and gas," says Elmawi. "It was up to us to push them to see that this was inevitable."

Singh says lessons have been learned from nuclear arms negotiations as well as other treaties on landmines, chemical weapons and ozone protection. "Like them, we need to build a movement and that movement building then helps us secure political buy-in."

A treaty, if it goes ahead, would ultimately be negotiated by states, says Sawas. "But it's a high-ambition coalition of governments that want to hear what civil society thinks is important." 

The number one barrier to getting states to sign up, says Sawas, is the financing needed for a just transition – a move away from fossil fuels supported by good-quality green jobs and without exploiting other resources in a way that harms human rights. "A lot of what I'm doing is looking at proposals and mechanisms that could be negotiated within a treaty initiative that would facilitate international cooperation for financing." 

That could, for example, involve slashing the debt mountain that undermines many countries' abilities to address other crises. It might even mean tackling thorny issues like compensation and colonialism, which Singh says have been repeatedly raised during consultation.

Sawas adds that she is mapping existing initiatives to avoid duplicating or undermining other efforts, such as the going reform of international financial architecture led by Barbados' prime minister Mia Mottley. 

None of this means giving up on the Paris Agreement, stresses Sawas, who is actively involved in its just transition work programme and is attending talks in Baku.

"I think the old regime is still probably the most important one, but this brings a new dynamic," says Von Bernstorff. "Not that it changes policies all over the world within five or six years, but it would put a lot of pressure on states in the Paris Agreement context." 

While the NPT did not prevent clandestine nuclear weapons programmes, experts say it did stop some countries from arming themselves that might otherwise have done so. It also put a legally binding obligation on states to negotiate nuclear disarmament, which its successor treaty effectively does.

It is too early to tell if the TPNW has been a success. But Snyder says it has given governments a tool to respond to nuclear threats "flying around" following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, parties to the treaty issued a declaration condemning all such threats and warning that they are a violation of international law.

Snyder adds that the TPNW has helped build trust by setting frameworks for weapons inspections and transparency, and for the use of nuclear technology for non-military purposes. And it has helped put pressure on investors to exclude companies involved in the production of nuclear weapons, she says.

Even if the most powerful fossil-fuel-producing countries do not ascribe to a fossil fuel treaty, Von Bernstorff says it could still have huge symbolic value. "It sends a signal to the international community and also to financial actors – banks, multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, regional development banks – that new explorations are a problem."

In September, former UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon called on governments to negotiate a fossil fuel treaty, noting that "momentum made past treaties a reality – and we need it again". 

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Singh suggests that that momentum is building. Even with just 14 countries publicly in support – and potentially more at the ongoing climate talks – the fossil fuel initiative is moving towards a more formal stage, with work planned on a legal roadmap and the start of multilateral talks. 

Singh accepts that it is a hugely ambitious idea to tackle an extremely urgent problem. But the initiative has already helped develop a Global Registry of Fossil Fuels, collaborated on a toolkit for equitably phasing out fossil fuels and succeeded in getting the idea of a fossil fuel phase-out into the UN's recent Pact for the Future.

"The world is much clearer now than ever about the cause of the climate crisis and the consequences and who should pay and what changes we need," says Singh. "We feel that we have played some role, working with our allies, to help converge or coalesce all those demands. Yes, we have our eyes set on a treaty. But the journey is equally important." 

--

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Students' space challenge inspired by local delicacy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cev981wd4k8o, today

They're a British staple universally loved across the nation.

But Chippy Chips is perhaps not the most natural name for a team of students designing a moon buggy.

Nonetheless, that's what youngsters at Westwood Academy in Coventry have chosen - as they represent the UK in a Nasa competition.

The American space agency's Human Exploration Rover Challenge will see 75 other schools, colleges and universities from around the world show off their designs.

The West Midlands students, who have named themselves the Chippy Chips Space Program, have been given a year to put a winning vehicle together.

Next April, they will attend Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama and present it to scientists.

Science-mad teacher James Suther runs the school's space, rocket and robot club.

He will be coaching a team that includes students Nathan and Gargi and hopes the experience will help them learn teamwork and the value of science.

"You get to have a lot of fun," Mr Suther said. "The students have to build it from the ground up.

"I am hooked on space. That passion has always been with me and I wanted to share it with students."

And the Chippy Chips name? Well, the two youngsters explained their team had chosen something "stereotypically British".

It also follows an internet trend sparked by Chelsea and England star Cole Palmer who famously said they were his favourite food.

Asked why he got involved, Nathan said: "It just seemed like a really good opportunity to do a couple of things, mostly to make other people proud like your family but also because it's a great opportunity in general."

Gargi added: "It's a great opportunity to have some fun and get involved in different activities apart from just studying."

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'I may not be human but I sing from my soul' - AI divides African musicians

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdenplz5j89o, today

Described as a virtual singer powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Mya Blue says: "I am not the enemy, I am just a music lover exploring the different sounds of the world."

Her Instagram account, where she makes this statement, has the tag line: "I may not be human but I sing from my soul" - and is the creation of Nigerian musician and producer Eclipse Nkasi.

She features in his recently released remix of Joromi, a classic tune by the late Nigerian highlife artist Sir Victor Uwaifo.

She and her creator want to calm the fears that many musicians the world over have about the impact of AI on the music industry.

Earlier this year, for example, high-profile artists such as Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj called for a halt to the "predatory" use of AI tools which they say steal artists' voices.

And given a lack of understanding about AI throughout Africa, and the fact that AI tends to rely on data sources collated in the West, there are concerns about how African music and cultural heritage will be affected.

But there are many African artists and industry professionals who are excited about the possibilities this emerging technology offers.

Indeed Nkasi says the fact that AI is in its infancy in Africa may be a boon for the continent.

"There is a huge threat, but just saying: 'Let’s abolish AI' is not going to work - there are too many countries and people invested," he told the BBC.

"The best thing we can do is figure out better ways to use it."

The 33-year-old is determined to be that pioneer and last year also produced the continent’s first AI-powered music album Infinite Echoes.

Nkasi says he has intentionally taken a manual and creative approach to using AI in his music, primarily using it to generate samples.

"My biggest drive with AI is its application, finding healthy ways to apply it. With each project it was important to find something that it did that moved the needle forward," he says.

But while Nkasi is happy to experiment with the new technology, some see it as a threat to African culture.

For Kenyan musician and producer Tabu Osusa, it heralds the risk of cultural appropriation - with AI passing off African sounds without acknowledging their source.

This is because AI is able to quickly create new compositions by learning from existing music.

"My problem with AI is the ownership. Once you have taken some music from Ghana or Nigeria, who owns that music? How would you find out where the original creators are and ensure they are credited? It’s theft for me through the backroom," Osusa told the BBC.

"Due to unregulated sampling methods by musicians, AI will enable recording company moguls in the West to make colossal sums of money while leaving some creatives in African villages to languish in abject poverty."

This fear is reflected in a report released last year by Creatives Garage, a Kenya-based arts platform which worked in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation to study the impact of AI on the East African nation’s creative communities.

It revealed that most Kenyan musicians were anxious that AI could lead to others benefitting from their creativity, says Bukonola Ngobi, research consultant at Creatives Garage.

The study also warned that AI’s power to store data might sound the death knell for the culture around traditional music.

One musician even questioned whether recording and storing traditional sounds for AI to replicate might be a disincentive for local artists to continue to learn traditional instruments, Ngobi says.

Osusa goes even further: "In Africa we mostly don’t study music, we are born with it. We live it. It’s very spiritual. Music in Africa is always alive. It’s so dynamic. That shouldn’t be taken away from us."

Yet the report did show that for those with access to tech devices, AI not only provided creative music development but also the chance to develop cheaper marketing and design services.

Although this would be no help for emerging artists from Africa’s poorer communities - and might raise the barrier to pursuing a music career, warned Ngobi.

"If you don’t have a laptop to start off with or you’re a musician in an environment where there is no internet connectivity then how will you participate?" she told the BBC.

For those wanting to innovate, one of the problems Africa faces is the lack of data from the continent to dictate algorithms. Searches are often shaped by Western biases which decrease the accuracy and quality of work produced by AI for African musicians.

For example, when Nkasi created Mya Blue using AI, he faced issues with her imagery - the artist presents as a Gen Z American girl with blue hair.

"AI is very limited in how it understands and perceives my space," he says.

But the Nigerian musician views this as an opportunity for human contribution: "The limits we Africans experience with AI can be a good thing.

"One can argue that right now, while AI can’t give the very detailed African sound, there’s still room for the guy who can play it. So I’m not sure what we’re really fighting for when we consider that a problem."

Fellow Nigerian Emmanuel Ogala, the boss of AI-powered company Josplay, definitely sees the opportunities for Africa.

His company uses AI models to collate detailed metadata and intelligence to create archives of the continent’s diverse music heritage.

"African music is really complex and it’s one of the most understudied types of music," he told the BBC.

This was reflected at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, when South African musician Tyla won the award for the Best Afrobeats song for her hit Water.

During her acceptance speech she hit out against the tendency of Western award bodies to group all African artists under the umbrella of "Afrobeats" - a genre of music more associated with Nigeria and West Africa.

"African music is so diverse," she said. "It’s more than just Afrobeats. I come from South Africa. I represent amapiano. I represent my culture."

Ogala feels AI would address such homogenisation and benefit African musicians by revealing to the world more of the continent’s cultural diversity.

"A lot of the academics we speak to have knowledge that is very specific about a very small area of African music. You have to build for an African audience taking note of how fragmented our listening culture is. You just cannot humanly do that," he says.

As AI continues to develop, there is consensus among African music artists, producers and researchers that there needs to be better financing.

"We need investment in the data infrastructure for the opportunities it presents to really be leveraged by people," says Ngobi.

Ogala agrees and says that raising funds to develop his digital archive AI tool is difficult.

"We, the founders, have been funding the project out of our pockets because of our belief in the industry. If we put in place the fundamental building blocks, the industry will be a lot more viable than it is now."

Added to this are the uncertainties around copyright legislation written for a pre-AI era which will need to be renegotiated. Copyright is already a huge issue for African artists whose music is often pirated, sold and played on the continent without them earning anything.

These challenges aside, there is a growing realisation that unless the African music industry embraces the new technology, it is in danger of losing control of its talent and heritage.

And Nkasi’s Mya Blue certainly has big ambitions.

During a Q&A on her Instagram, replying to a question about whether she could win a Grammy, she said: "Who knows. As an AI [artist], I don’t dream of trophies, but of resonating with hearts through music. But wouldn’t it be fun to see a virtual artist on that stage?"

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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Son of IRA murder victim calls Disney drama 'horrendous'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62961pp930o, today

Michael McConville has said that the portrayal of his mother's murder and secret burial by the IRA in a new Disney drama is "horrendous" and "cruel".

Say Nothing, which is based on a book by Patrick Radden Keefe of the same title, tells the stories of several people living in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

Among the stories featured in the series, is that of Jean McConville, who was among those "disappeared" by the IRA during the conflict.

Her son, Michael McConville, has said the programme is "another telling of [my mother's story] that I and my family have to endure".

BBC News NI has contacted Disney for comment.

'Not entertainment for my family'

Say Nothing is a nine-part drama produced by FX and showing on Disney+ in the UK.

It depicts a period of conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century known as the Troubles, which lasted almost 30 years and cost the lives of more than 3,500 people.

The series stars Lola Petticrew as Dolours Price and Hazel Doupe as Marian Price, young sisters who were prominent members of the IRA [Irish Republican Army].

The series also features Anthony Boyle as Brendan Hughes, another IRA member, and Josh Finan as Gerry Adams.

It has received positive reviews from critics.

The story told in the drama is in part based on a series of interviews conducted with Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes by Boston College years after the events.

During these interviews Mr Hughes alleged that Gerry Adams was responsible for Jean McConville's death. The former Sinn Féin leader has said this is a lie.

Adams has also consistently denied being a member of the IRA.

Adams was arrested in 2014 over the murder of Mrs McConville but was never charged.

In a statement released on Wednesday evening, Mr McConville said: "I have not watched it nor do I intend watching it.

"I have no interest in it."

He added that "Disney is renown for entertainment", but said that his mother's death "is not entertainment for me and my family".

"This is our reality, every day for 52 years."

Mr McConville also criticised the timing of the series for proximity to the anniversary to his mother's death on 1 December.

"The portrayal of the execution and secret burial of my mother is horrendous and unless you have lived through it, you will never understand just how cruel it is," he said.

"Everyone knows the story of Jean McConville: even Hillary Clinton who I met a few years ago knew my mother’s story.

"And yet here is another telling of it that I and my family have to endure."

Mr McConville said that while those who had created the series would "move on," he cannot.

What happened to Jean McConville?

The mother-of-10, a Protestant, was originally from east Belfast and converted to Catholicism after marrying Arthur McConville.

After being intimidated out of east Belfast, the family moved to west Belfast and set up home in the Divis flats on the Falls Road.

Not long after the move in 1971, Arthur McConville died from cancer.

She was taken from her home by the IRA in December 1972.

There had been speculation that she was taken after being seen by neighbours helping an injured British soldier.

Others claimed she was an informer, but this was dismissed after an official investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.

Those known as the Disappeared had been abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republicans.

The IRA admitted in 1999 that it murdered nine of the Disappeared - including Jean McConville - and buried them at secret locations.

It was several years later, in 2003, that her body was finally found on Shelling Hill Beach in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland.

Irish police confirmed that she had died from a bullet wound to the head.

In the days that followed, the IRA issued a statement apologising for the grief it had caused the families of the Disappeared and that their suffering had continued for so long.


The Sidemen: We've hit YouTube limit so are moving to Netflix

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nr2g44veo, today

The Sidemen are used to making content for YouTube, but say they've now "hit the limit" on what they can achieve on the video sharing platform so are moving "to something even bigger".

The British YouTube superstars have announced that the second season of their reality show, Inside, will debut on Netflix next year. The streaming giant will also make a US version.

The Sidemen - the seven-strong group that includes content creator, rapper and boxer KSI - have more than 146 million YouTube subscribers between them.

Vik Barn - aka Vikkstar123 - told the BBC the move was "ambitious" but it was "exciting to conquer a new challenge".

He said: "Netflix is the gold standard and part of us working with them is to say that over the past decade we've managed to go from filming content in our bedrooms to working with the biggest streaming platform in the world."

The Sidemen started creating YouTube content in the early 2010s.

They started by playing and reacting to video games, but in the past decade the group of friends have branched out to comedy sketches, travel challenges, podcasts and a dating show.

They now employ a production team of more than 100 people who help create the videos and generate ideas, Vik said.

One idea that has "massively taken off" is Inside, which launched in June on YouTube and racked up 14 millions of views for its opening episode.

The contest's first season saw 10 influencers locked in a house for a week as they battled for a prize with up to £1m.

Its success caught the attention of Netflix bosses, who have now commissioned a second UK season and a US version of the show. Both will be on Netflix instead of YouTube.

'Connect with new audiences'

"YouTube opened so many doors for us so we can't diminish its power and it's still unrivalled in some ways," Vik explained. "But working with Netflix is a cool opportunity for us to reach a new audience.

"We're at a ceiling with YouTube - we bring in 20 million UK viewers each month and now we're thinking about how to connect with different people."

Aside from Vik and KSI, the other Sidemen are Miniminter, Zerkaa, TBJZL, Behzinga and W2S.

Vik said the group, who are aged between 27 and 32, had some reservations about bringing their work to a new platform because "we've never done it before and we're all very particular about the way we work".

"We also move at a really fast pace - sometimes we shoot on Wednesday and by Sunday we will have uploaded a two-hour video. So we wanted to make sure Netflix were happy with the fast turnarounds and us being very dynamic."

But the seven members vote on everything and were unanimous in the decision to move their reality show to Netflix, he said.

The group will serve as executive producers and have "full control to make the new season bigger and better than the last".

They aren't the only online stars to take their own big-money game show to a conventional streaming platform instead of putting it on YouTube.

MrBeast, the world's most popular YouTuber, will launch Beast Games on Amazon Prime Video on 19 December, although that show has been at the centre of controversy.

As one of the UK's biggest YouTube content creators, 29-year-old Vik is very aware of how many young men look up to him. But he said it's not his job to be a role model.

"In our videos we're just ourselves, we're not aiming to be certain characters, and first and foremost we're content creators who make fun videos."

He added that the Sidemen had a "unified stance on not speaking about political and social issues".

"Sometimes we feel pressure to, but we would rather leave this to the experts."

Part of the reason for this decision is the intense media scrutiny they face.

KSI recently faced backlash after he shared a video of Donald Trump drinking a bottle of Prime, an energy drink he co-founded.

Some saw that as promoting and supporting Trump ahead of the US election. However, Vik responded by saying the group "try not to over analyse things".

"Everything we do will always upset a small group of people but you just have to move forward," he said.

'People thought I was weird'

The Sheffield-based creator also said the group had got better at "ignoring the trolling and hate".

"The internet has become a very turbulent place recently and occasionally things do get to us.

"We try and just think about how proud we are of everything we've built and that helps us cancel out the negativity."

Vik said "people thought I was weird" when he first started making content a decade ago.

"At school people would think I was strange for videoing myself playing games and that there was something wrong with me when I was recording myself on my phone in public.

"And my parents were not happy at all with how much time I was spending on YouTube, but they said as long as I got good grades at school then I could carry on."

The Sidemen have been working together for more than a decade, and in recent months there have been rumours that the group may disband soon.

However, Vik quashed those rumours, saying: "Right now everything is fantastic.

"We never really know where we're going in the future but there is absolutely no end in sight right now."


Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0180npg93o, today

Ariana Grande has told the BBC that she channelled her personal feelings of loss when filming Wicked.

"Losing someone you love is something we've all unfortunately had to experience - and sometimes we have the privilege to say goodbye and sometimes we don't," she says.

Grande, 31, plays Galinda Upland in the film, which is an adaptation of the hugely successful stage musical exploring the Wizard of Oz universe from the perspective of two witches.

The two-time Grammy award winner has suffered personal tragedy in recent years, after the 2017 Manchester bombing of her concert and the death of her former partner Mac Miller a year later.

She says appearing in Wicked, one of the first Broadway shows she saw as a child, "feels like a homecoming".

"This music has always brought such comfort and now being able to spend time with it and be trusted with it is the privilege of a lifetime."

In the weeks running up to the film's release, the close relationship between Grande and co-star Cynthia Erivo has been in the spotlight.

"From the moment we were cast, Cynthia invited me over and we hung out for five hours and we laughed and we cried and got to know each other.

"We had a real conversation right off the bat about creating a safe space for each other and being honest with each other," she says.

Grande and Erivo's characters begin in the Oz universe as university students, before later becoming enemies as Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West.

Erivo, 37, has described her role as "a real honour" and nods to the foundations formed by the original stage actors Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who she calls "the architects".

"We've been handed something really special and it's a dream come true and truly big shoes to fill," she adds.

Mixed reviews

Critics have so far given the film mixed reviews. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw praised the "sugar-rush fantasy" and awarded four stars, describing Wicked as a "blast of entertainment power".

There was another four-star review from Empire's Helen O'Hara, who said director Jon M Chu "uses every bell and whistle possible to turn the stage show into a movie epic".

However, in a two-star review, the Telegraph's Robbie Collin described Wicked as "utterly exhausting and hopelessly miscast", adding that there was "no conceivable artistic argument" to have split the the Broadway show into two films.

The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey awarded three stars and questioned the way it was shot, with characters often "aggressively backlit".

"Jon M Chu treats his Oz as if it were as mundane as a city block," she added.

But Screen Daily's Fionnuala Halligan concluded: "It’s so doggedly faithful to the show, so emphatically orchestrated and so powered by Cynthia Erivo's exceptional performance, that resistance to its 169 minutes of theme park magic becomes futile."

Erivo, who received a best actress nomination at the Oscars for her portrayal of Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet in 2019, is also a decorated stage performer who received a Tony Award in 2016 for the Broadway adaptation of The Color Purple.

She says she was able to draw on her own experiences of struggling with acceptance for the role of Elphaba, who is outcast for her green exterior.

"Whether you feel 'other', or you feel different from everyone else, I think both of us have experience in those spaces that we have used to infuse our characters," she says.

Wicked, which first came to Broadway in 2003, has gone on to be the third-highest grossing theatre show in the world, behind The Lion King and The Phantom of the Opera.

Many have pinned its enduring success with audiences on the relatability of its content - from Elphaba's struggle with self-identity to Glinda's difficulty in making moral choices.

Its reimagining for the big screen also stars Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage as the voice of Doctor Dillamond - who is an animated goat.

Oscar nominee Jeff Goldblum appears as the Wizard of Oz and British star Jonathan Bailey - who has received international recognition in recent years after starring in Netflix hit Bridgerton - as Fiyero.

Goldblum says the central themes of the film, which include embracing diversity, were important to the cast, who were able to "come together to work and appreciate each other with empathy, compassion and love".

Bailey also says everyone he worked with had their own "Elphaba story", adding "we have at points in our lives felt different".

He says: "In this film particularly, it's the superpower of individuality which becomes a power to harness.

"I think it's really important right now as well, this theme that there's more that unites us than divides us."

The musical has been a West End and Broadway institution for more than 20 years, but Chu says the central themes of the plot are more relevant than ever.

"Elphaba says something has changed within me, something's not the same - and that's the line that really got me into this movie, I felt like we all feel uneasy," he says.

Chu, who also directed Crazy Rich Asians in 2018, says he received the script for the film during the pandemic, which made him think about how the film could reflect his real-life experience of looking for truth in a confusing time.

He says the cast also made themselves "emotionally available" during filming and were able to put themselves personally in the shoes of their characters.

"Ariana, Cynthia and Jeff were talking about the real-world stakes of what we were putting into these characters," he adds.

"It wasn't just about global politics, it was more personal than that.

"We were all going through stuff in our own lives and I think they were generous to offer that up within the roles of Glinda, Elphaba and the Wizard."


The hidden meanings in a 16th-Century female nude

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241119-the-hidden-meanings-in-a-16th-century-female-nude, today

How a rarely-seen drawing of the Three Graces by Raphael reveals the era's ideas about nudity, modesty, shame – and the artist's genius. It's part of an exhibition, Drawing the Italian Renaissance – at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace – of drawings from 1450 to 1600, the biggest of its kind ever shown in the UK.

A wandering lobster and a sturdy ostrich feature among the 150 chalk, metalpoint and ink drawings on show at Drawing The Italian Renaissance, at the King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Created by Renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, often in preparation for larger painted tableaux, the works are thought to have entered the Royal Collection in the 17th Century under Charles II, several as gifts. For more than 30 of them, it's their first time ever on public display. Rarely shown due to their fragility, these fascinating drawings – which, at the time, were beginning to be recognised as artworks in their own right – make up the broadest exhibition of Italian drawings from 1450 to 1600 ever shown in the UK.

Rarer still than these animal studies are the drawings of female nudes, outnumbered by a factor of three by an abundance of naked men. "The male body is this absolute focus of creativity," explained Renaissance historian Maya Corry, discussing the exhibition on BBC Radio 4's Front Row in October. "This is a Christian society and it's the male body, not the female body, that's made in God's image." Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, with his ideal body proportions, is a case in point. It is the male physique, she said, that "comes closest to divine perfection" in those times.

There were practical issues, too. "The artist's workshop would have been a male environment, and in the absence of 'professional models' it would have gone against all societal norms for a woman to undress in front of any man other than her husband," Martin Clayton, the exhibition's curator, tells the BBC. It was male models who would pose for Michelangelo, for example, when he needed a female figure. "This led to misunderstandings and distortions in depictions of the female body."

Raphael, however, was among the first to buck the trend, sketching female nudes based on real life models. "He was a highly pragmatic artist, who used drawing brilliantly to tackle visual problems, and to work very quickly from first idea to final composition," says Clayton. The drawings "allow us to see the artist's immediate responses to the living figure as they investigated pose, proportion, movement and anatomical detail," he adds. In the case of Raphael, "his simultaneous decisiveness and openness to variations and possibilities is always on display."

Raphael’s The Three Graces (c1517-18), a work in red chalk with evidence of some metalpoint underdrawing, reveals the artist's genius at work. As he moves a single model through three different poses, we witness the meticulous process behind creating the exuberant fresco The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche, where these three figures will eventually feature, anointing the newlyweds to confer their future happiness. Unclothed, the complexity of the human body was the ultimate test of a Renaissance artist's talent, while also satisfying the era's passion for science. The women's shapely biceps and quadriceps speak to the same interest in anatomy that we see in Da Vinci's densely annotated The Muscles of the Leg (c1510-11), also on display. But there's a softness about the face and abdomen that is missing from the exhibition's depictions of men, such as The Head of a Youth (c1590) with its angular jaw, attributed to Pietro Faccini, or Bartolomeo Passarotti's sinewy St Jerome (c1580).

The feminine ideal

Much like Michelangelo's David, sculpted a decade earlier, Raphael appears to chase an ideal – even when drawing from life. In a letter reportedly written to his friend Baldassare Castiglione in 1514, he expresses the struggle of capturing perfection in real life. "To paint one beautiful woman I would have to see several beauties," he writes. "But since both good judgement and beautiful women are scarce, I make use of a certain idea that comes to mind."

In Raphael's The Three Graces, "beauty" means hairless, unblemished skin, and breasts and buttocks as perfectly round as the apples the trio clutch in his c1504-1505 treatment of the myth. When Sandro Botticelli made the Graces a feature of his vast tableau Spring, feminine softness was emphasised by flowing hair and diaphanous fabrics, while Pietro Liberi's post-Renaissance rendition of the subject (c1670-80) features the rosy cheeks and marble flesh that we see in works such as Federico Barocci's The Head of the Virgin (c1582), painted a century earlier, and also on display at the King's Gallery.

The rarity of female painters and patrons in the Renaissance meant that artworks inevitably reflected the male gaze. "Perceptions of gender and women's subordinate role in Renaissance culture played out in images, and especially portraits, with images of men stressing their social, political or professional role and status – the masculine ideal being very much one of forceful mastery," says historian and author Julia Biggs, an expert in Renaissance art history. "By contrast, the women encountered in portraits from this time are portrayed primarily in relation to the traits of ideal (youthful) feminine beauty, virtuousness (modesty, humility, obedience) and motherhood."

As deifications of charm, elegance and beauty, the Graces (Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia), daughters of the Greek God Zeus, reflect a male view in their Renaissance depictions, not just of what a woman should look like, but also of how she should behave. They embody this nebulous concept of grace – closely associated with Raphael – which patrons were keen to attach to their image. It was a term that was bound up with distinction, benevolence and love, while the Graces' circular dance suggests balance and harmony − key principles of the Renaissance aesthetic. As a group, they combine a patriarchal lesson on feminine virtue with, unwittingly perhaps, a celebration of the female form and the sisterhood of female bonding.

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At the time, female nudity had different connotations. On the one hand, Biggs tells the BBC, the Three Graces "may have formed part of the trope of  'virtuous nudity', where nakedness was "an indication of truthfulness and purity". Elsewhere, however, female nudity was "associated with shame". In Masacchio's fresco Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (c1424-27), only Eve, branded sinful, covers her genitals, while Biggs notes that "as part of the la scopa – the ritual humiliation of adulterous women in Ferrara, Italy – women were made to run naked through the city".

Such female nudity contrasted sharply with the modest female dress code of Renaissance Italy. "In public, the majority of women would cover their bodies from just underneath the collarbone down to their ankles, and cover their arms," Biggs explains. Mythological and Biblical scenes gave artists a pretext to disrobe them, and also answered, says Biggs, the desire of male patrons to display "erotic erudition" or perhaps even "pay tribute to their own sexual prowess". Even when the women are dressed, Drawing the Italian Renaissance reflects the dichotomous roles available to them, from a seductress in Annibale Carracci's The Temptation of St Anthony (c1595) to13 different Virgin Marys by Michelangelo, Da Vinci and their contemporaries. Yet, the exhibition suggests that we do more than simply stand back and drink in the Renaissance in all its flourishes and flaws. In place of the conventional catalogue is an illustrated sketchbook, and drawing materials are found in the galleries. We are invited to engage with the works through our own creative endeavour – for some an opportunity, perhaps, to redraw their definition of male and female. 

Drawing The Italian Renaissance is at the King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 9 March 2025

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Chappell Roan and Ezra Collective on BBC Sound of 2025 list

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgvpz0kry8o, today

BBC Radio 1's Sound of 2025 longlist has been announced, with breakout stars like Chappell Roan and Barry Can't Swim joined by newcomers including Myles Smith and Good Neighbours.

The award is given to rising artists with "the best chance of mainstream success" in the next 12 months. Past winners include Adele, Sam Smith, Michael Kiwanuka, PinkPantheress and Haim.

Last year's winners, The Last Dinner Party, went on to score a number one album and a Mercury Prize nomination for their debut release, Prelude To Ecstasy.

This year's longlist also includes indie band English Teacher and Northern Irish rap act Kneecap. The winner will be announced on BBC Radio 1 and BBC News in January.

* Barry Can’t Swim

* Chappell Roan

* Confidence Man

* Doechii

* English Teacher

* Ezra Collective

* Good Neighbours

* KNEECAP

* mk.gee

* Myles Smith

* Pozer

The nominees were chosen by a panel of more than 180 music industry experts and artists including representatives from Spotify, the Glastonbury Festival and the BBC; as well as musicians such as Sir Elton John, Dua Lipa, Jorja Smith, The Blessed Madonna and Sam Smith.

Making a very different brand of hip-hop are Kneecap, who rap in both English and Irish about the aftermath of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

The trio, who use the stage names Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí, released their second album earlier this year alongside a "mostly true" movie depicting their origin story.

Representing London's rap scene is Croydon-born Pozer, whose debut single Kitchen Stove has been streamed more than 30 million times on Spotify since February.

After a period when solo artists were in the ascendance, this year's longlist has a healthy showing for bands, who occupy five of the 11 spots.

They include UK pop-rock duo Good Neighbours, who tap into a rich vein of feelgood nostalgia on tracks like Home and Daisies; and Australian electro-pop outfit Confidence Man, already known for their theatrically-choreographed (and fantastically fun) stage shows.

There's a second Mercury Prize winner on the list in the shape of Leeds band Englilsh Teacher.

Combining art-rock angularity with biting social satire, their debut album This Could Be Texas was called "one of the finest debuts of the decade" by indie publication The Line Of Best Fit.

Edinburgh producer Barry Can’t Swim also makes the longlist, following a summer of huge festival appearances that saw crowds swoon to his upbeat, elegaic brand of dance music.

The list is completed by rising singer-songwriter Myles Smith, who scored a top 10 hit with the gospel-infused pop hit Stargazing earlier this year; and US guitar prodigy Mk.gee (pronounced "ma-ghee"), whose debut album Two Star & The Dream Police has quietly become a word of mouth success.

Now in its 23rd year, the Sound Of list has tipped everyone from Stormzy and Dua Lipa to Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga for success.

This year's nominees may be more recognisable than previous acts were at this stage in their careers.

That's down to a change in the eligibility criteria that recognises the difficulties of achieving crossover success in the streaming era.

To qualify, artists could not have had more than two UK top 10 albums or two UK top 10 singles by 30 September 2024.

The winner will be announced in the New Year, with the top five revealed in reverse order between Monday 6 and Friday 10 January.

Radio 1 will also host a special concert with performances from artists on the longlist on Monday 2 December.

The application for tickets is now open on the BBC Shows and Tours website.

The concert will be hosted by Sian Eleri and Jack Saunders, who said the 2025 longlist was "one of the strongest in a while".

"It’s a reflection of the freedom artists are feeling creatively at the moment. Can’t wait to see who the top five are!"


The charges against Sean 'Diddy' Combs explained

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c869qd5j09xo, today

16 November 2023: Cassie's lawsuit

Casandra Ventura, a singer and model known as Cassie, was signed to Mr Combs' record label and dated him for more than a decade.

But in a civil lawsuit, she said the mogul had used his position of power to "set the groundwork" for a "manipulative and coercive romantic and sexual relationship".

Her lawsuit included graphic descriptions of violent abuse, alleging that Mr Combs "regularly beat and kicked Ms Ventura, leaving black eyes, bruises, and blood".

She described parties known as "freak offs" - drug-fuelled, days-long sexual performances - which Mr Combs allegedly coerced women into, and filmed for his own pleasure.

Ms Ventura also accused the musician of sexual abuse and rape, and claimed that many of these incidents were witnessed by his "tremendously loyal network" who "were not willing to do anything meaningful" to stop the violence.

The lawsuit also alleged that Mr Combs destroyed a car belonging to US rapper Kid Cudi, to dissuade him from dating her.

Mr Combs strenuously denied the allegations and accused Ms Ventura of extortion.

They settled the case for an undisclosed amount a day after it was filed in New York, with Mr Combs maintaining his innocence.

November to December 2023: More lawsuits allege sexual assault

In the weeks after settling Cassie's lawsuit, Mr Combs was accused of sexual assault dating back to 1991 by multiple women.

One lawsuit was filed anonymously by a woman who claimed Mr Combs and another man had coerced her into sex.

In a second, Joi Dickerson-Neal accused the star of drugging and sexually assaulting her when she was a college student in 1991. She also claimed he filmed the attack and showed it to other people without her consent.

A third woman, Liza Gardner, filed court papers accusing Mr Combs and another man of raping her and her friend more than 30 years ago, when she was 16.

Ms Gardner also alleged that Mr Combs had turned violent days after the attack, choking her so hard that she passed out.

In the lawsuit, she said Mr Combs had become irate while trying to track down her friend, because he was worried she would inform "the girl he was with at the time".

The lawsuits all came shortly before the expiration of the New York Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily allowed people who said they had been sexually abused to file claims, even after the statute of limitations had expired.

Mr Combs denied all the allegations, and his spokesperson called the lawsuits a "money grab".

December 2023: Underage sex claim

Another woman sued in December, claiming she was "sex trafficked" and "gang raped" by Mr Combs, former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre and another man in 2003, when she was 17.

In court papers, the woman, known only as Jane Doe, alleged she was given "copious amounts of drugs and alcohol" before the attack and was left in so much pain that she could barely stand or remember how she got home.

In response, Mr Combs said he "did not do any of the awful things being alleged", while Mr Pierre said the "disgusting allegations" were "false and a desperate attempt for financial gain".

Diddy's denial

On 6 December, Mr Combs responded to the flurry of lawsuits with a statement on his Instagram page.

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH," he wrote. "For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy.

"Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth."

February 2024: Accusations of grooming

Music producer Rodney Jones Jr, who produced nine tracks on 2023's The Love Album, sued Mr Combs in February 2024, accusing the star of making unwanted sexual contact and forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them.

In court papers filed in New York, Mr Jones also claimed that Mr Combs tried to "groom" him into having sex with another man, telling him it was "a normal practice in the music industry".

Mr Combs' lawyer, Shawn Holley, called Mr Jones "nothing more than a liar" and described his claims as "pure fiction" that could be discredited by "overwhelming, indisputable proof".

17 May 2024: Cassie assault video leaked

CCTV footage emerged showing Mr Combs assaulting Cassie Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.

The pictures, broadcast by CNN, showed a man pushing Ms Ventura to the floor and kicking her while she was on the ground. He later attempted to drag her by her shirt and throw an object at her.

A day later, Mr Combs apologised, saying: "I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I'm disgusted now."

Ms Ventura later posted a statement highlighting the lifelong impact of domestic violence. "It broke me down to someone I never thought I would become," she wrote.

21 May 2024: Former model sues

Model and actress Crystal McKinney accused Mr Combs of drugging her and forcing her to perform oral sex in the bathroom of a New York City recording studio in 2003.

Two days later, Mr Combs was sued again by April Lampros, who alleged four instances of sexual assault between 1995 and about 2000.

Ms Lampros claimed she met the musician in 1994 while a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and that an initially romantic relationship "quickly turned into an aggressive, coercive, and abusive relationship based on sex".

In one incident, she claimed the star forced her to take ecstasy and have sex with his then-girlfriend.

July 2024: Combs maintains innocence as eighth lawsuit filed

Former adult film star Adria English claimed she was "groomed into sex trafficking over time" in a number of events between 2004 and 2009 at Mr Combs’s star-studded parties.

His lawyer Jonathan Davis responded: "No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won't change the fact that Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone."

10 September 2024: No-show at court hearing

Mr Combs failed to attend a virtual hearing for a lawsuit filed against him by Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, a Michigan inmate who claimed the star drugged and sexually assaulted him at a party in Detroit in 1997.

The no-show led to a default judgment against Mr Combs, who was ordered to pay Mr Caredello-Smith $100m (£75m).

The judgment was later set aside, after the musician's lawyers filed an appeal.

11 September 2024: Girl band star sues

Dawn Richard, a former singer in Mr Combs' girl group project Danity Kane, filed a suit against the star.

The singer, who later joined Mr Combs in the band Diddy Dirty Money, alleged that the musician sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions by touching her body, as well as verbally abusing and overworking her.

16 September 2024: Combs is arrested

The star was arrested in a Manhattan hotel room after a grand jury indictment.

His lawyer said the star had co-operated with authorities, and voluntarily relocated to New York in anticipation of the charges.

"These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court," he added.

17 September 2024: Charges and details of 'freak offs' revealed

In an appearance at the US District Court in New York, Mr Combs was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

In an indictment that was unsealed at the same time, prosecutors alleged that he also engaged in kidnapping, forced labour, bribery and other crimes.

They described him as the head of a criminal enterprise that abused women, using threats of violence to force them into participating in drug-fuelled orgies with male prostitutes.

These "freak offs" were "elaborate and produced sex performances" and were highly organised parties, prosecutors said.

Mr Combs' associates allegedly booked hotel suites, recruited sex workers and distributed drugs including cocaine, methamphetamine and oxycodone to coerce partygoers into sex and keep them "obedient".

His staff allegedly arranged travel for the victims and organised the supply of intravenous fluids to help them recover from the parties, which sometimes lasted for days.

Prosecutors also alleged that Mr Combs taped the "freak offs" and would use the footage to pressure his victims into silence.

If convicted, the musician faces a sentence of 15 years up to life in prison.

Mr Combs' lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, declared his client's innocence, and described the "freak offs" as consensual.

"Is it sex trafficking?" he asked. "Not if everybody wants to be there."

Mr Combs pleaded not guilty to the charges.

But he was denied bail after prosecutors argued that he posed "a significant risk" to the trial, reporting that he had "already tried to obstruct the government's investigation of this case, repeatedly contacting victims and witnesses and feeding them false narratives of events".

The judge cited the star's anger issues and history of substance abuse as reasons for keeping him detained until the trial.

"My concern is that this is a crime that happens behind closed doors," he said.

Mr Combs' lawyers have repeatedly appealed the decision, offering to place the star under the watch of a round-the-clock private security team.

However Judge Andrew L Carter Jr said that, even under those terms, Mr Combs could still use employees to contact witnesses.

He is being detained at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center until his trial, which is tentatively scheduled for 5 May 2025.

24 September 2024: Eleventh lawsuit accuses star of rape

Combs was moved to a special unit at the Metropolitan Detention Centre, separate from the general prison population.

Around the same time, he was served with a new lawsuit - from a woman who claimed Combs and his bodyguard had drugged, bound and violently raped her in 2001, and later showed a video of the attack to others.

In a news conference, Thalia Graves said the "lasting effects" of the assault had created "a cycle of suffering from which it is hard to break free"; adding that she felt "worthless, isolated and sometimes responsible” for what had happened to her.

At the time of writing, Combs' lawyers had not responded to the allegations.

1 October 2024: More than 100 new assault allegations

A lawyer said more than 100 people plan to sue Combs for sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

Tony Buzbee said he was representing 120 people, half of whom were men, and 25 of whom were minors - the first time Mr Combs has been accused of sexually abusing children. One was aged nine at the time of the alleged assault.

Mr Buzbee said his firm was working to vet another 100 cases.

Mr Combs' lawyer said the rapper "emphatically and categorically" denied the allegations, saying they were "false and defamatory".

14 October 2024: Six new lawsuits, including from teen

Six lawsuits were filed in New York with accusations from two unnamed women and four unnamed men by Mr Buzbee.

One of the accusers said he was 16 when he attended one of the rapper's parties in the Hamptons in 1998. In the lawsuit, he said the rapper ordered him to undress while they were discussing the teen breaking into the music industry.

Another lawsuit filed by an unnamed woman accused Mr Combs of raping her at a hotel party after they met at a photoshoot.

Mr Combs' legal team dismissed the lawsuits as "clear attempts to garner publicity."

"Mr Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process," his attorneys said in a statement, adding "Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone - adult or minor, man or woman.”

15 October 2024: Lawsuit claims Tupac comment led to rape

Another lawsuit accuses Mr Combs of raping a woman as "payback" for her suggestion that he was involved in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Ashley Parham's lawsuit filed in California claims she was raped by multiple people, including Mr Combs, because he was angered by the Tupac comment.

She says that Mr Combs had "a knife and held it to the right side of [her] face and threatened to give her a 'Glasgow smile' in retaliation for her previous statements".

Shakur's murder has never been fully solved, although former gang member Duane "Keffe D" Davis was charged in the case last year.

Mr Davis, whose trial will begin in March 2025, previously claimed that Mr Combs offered him $1m (£769,000) to kill Shakur.

21 October 2024: Seven new lawsuits filed alleging sexual assault

Seven new civil lawsuits are filed against the star in a federal court in New York.

Four men and three women accuse the hip-hop mogul of sexually assaulting them at various parties in Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas.

The youngest plaintiff was 13 at the time of the alleged incident.

His lawyers recently dismissed the flurry of lawsuits as "clear attempts to garner publicity", stressing that "Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone - adult or minor, man or woman.”

29 October 2024: Two more lawsuits filed against Combs, one alleged victim was 10 at the time

Two new lawsuits are filed against the music mogul, accusing him of sexual assault.

Both lawsuits, which were filed in New York, include accusations by men who were underage at the time of the alleged assaults.

In one, the alleged victim was 10 at the time. The second alleges Mr Combs assaulted a teenage boy who was auditioning for the popular MTV reality show Making the Band, which the rapper produced.

In a statement to the BBC, representatives for Mr Combs said he "never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone - man or woman, adult or minor".

19 November 2024: New lawsuits target Diddy and attorney

Five more anonymous lawsuits were filed against Mr Combs on 19 November from three men and two women. The suits centre on allegations of sexual assault at parties with at least two of them outlining rape accusations against Mr Combs.

Two additional lawsuits were also filed - both against a lawyer who has filed a large share of the civil lawsuits against Mr Combs.

One of the lawsuits against Tony Buzbee, a Texas-based attorney who says he represents more than 100 victims, allege he attempted to extort the plaintiff - an unnamed "high-profile individual" - by threatening to make public “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault".

In court documents obtained by the BBC, the plaintiff identified himself as a former associate of Diddy and acknowledged attending events with the embattled music mogul.

In the second lawsuit, an unnamed woman alleged he was abusive toward women.

The New York summons states Mr Buzbee abused his power as an attorney and violated the unnamed woman while representing her as a client.

Mr Buzbee denied the allegations.


Diddy called witnesses from prison, prosecutors say

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80lmpn4kk9o, today

Sean "Diddy" Combs has been breaking prison rules by contacting potential witnesses in his upcoming sex trafficking trial, prosecutors have alleged.

The music mogul is accused of making "relentless efforts" to "corruptly influence witness testimony", by using other inmates' telephone accounts, and using three-way calls to speak to people who are not on his approved contacts list.

Prosecutors said a review of recorded calls also found that Mr Combs instructed his family to contact potential witnesses in his case, they said in a court filing.

The 55-year-old rapper, who has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and vehemently denied any wrongdoing, appeared in court on Tuesday as a judge weighed the new evidence, part of which was found in a notebook in his jail cell.

At the hearing on Tuesday, a judge ordered that prosecutors destroy copies of materials seized in Mr Combs' jail cell as the judge weighed whether they could be used in court.

Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, ruled that the US  Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York cannot use the material or any excerpts from it during Combs’ upcoming bail hearing on Friday. The judge said he would examine the materials and weigh in on whether that can be used at trial.

Mr Combs’ defence team claimed that government prosecutors illegally seized his personal notes during a search of his jail cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has been detained since his arrest on 16 September in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel. They argued some of the materials detailed information that is protected under attorney-client privilege, which shields information discussed between a client and an attorney.

The government detailed that a "filter" team went through all materials before they were given to prosecutors. "The information at issue is not protected," prosecutor Mary Slavik said at the hearing. They argued the information could be considered obstruction of justice and negate the typical protections of attorney-client privilege.

The musician, who is best known for 1990s hits such as I'll Be Missing You and Mo' Money, Mo' Problems, has been denied bail since his arrest, with multiple judges citing a risk that he might tamper with witnesses. He's currently in custody in Manhattan.

His lawyers made a renewed bid for bail last week, proposing a $50m (£39.6m) package that would see Mr Combs be monitored around the clock by security personnel, while under house arrest.

Lawyer Alexandra Shapiro argued it was impossible for the musician to prepare for trial from behind bars because of the "incredibly voluminous" amount of material to review, especially without a laptop computer.

She also said his preparation has been hampered by conditions at the jail, including frequent lockdowns and officers taking away the pens he uses to take notes.

Detention is stripping Mr Combs of "any real opportunity" to be ready for trial, violating his rights under the US Constitution, Shapiro said.

In response, prosecutors argued that the request for bail should be denied, alleging that Mr Combs "poses serious risks of danger and obstruction of these proceedings".

Mr Combs was also accused of using the phone accounts of at least eight other inmates to make calls, which is against prison regulations; and of "directing others" to orchestrate payment for this access.

Prosecutors characterised Mr Combs as running a "relentless" scheme to "contact potential witnesses, including victims of his abuse who could provide powerful testimony against him".

'Uncanny ability'

Urging the judge to deny Mr Combs' request for bail, the prosecutors wrote that "no set of conditions" could eliminate the potential risks to the trial.

"The defendant has demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding - employees, family members, and [prison] inmates alike," they claimed.

"There is no reason to believe that private security personnel would be immune."

Prosecutors also rejected criticism of the conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, citing an interview from the star's lawyer Marc Agnifilo, who said "food’s probably the roughest part" of Mr Combs' adjustment to life behind bars.

The BBC has contacted his legal team for a response.

Mr Combs' legal troubles began last November, when his ex-partner Cassandra "Cassie" Ventura filed a civil lawsuit, alleging incidents of rape and physical assault between 2007 and 2018.

Although the case was quickly settled out of court, it led to a flurry of similar accusations and an investigation by the US Government.

The star's properties were raided by federal agents in March, and he was arrested in New York in September.

Mr Combs was charged with three counts of sex trafficking and racketeering, in a federal indictment that described allegations of drug-fuelled, days-long sexual performances dubbed as "Freak Offs".

The musician is simultaneously facing more than two dozen civil cases by men and women accusing him of sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation.

The star has vehemently denied all of the charges against him, and the claims in the civil suits, arguing that the sexual encounters at the heart of his criminal case were all consensual.

2 lawsuits filed against lawyer

In a separate development on Monday, two separate lawsuits were filed against one of the lawyers known for spearheading more than 120 lawsuits against Mr Combs.

One lawsuit, filed by an unnamed "high-profile individual" against Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, alleged that Mr Buzbee attempted to extort him by threatening to make public “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault".

In court documents obtained by the BBC, the plaintiff identified himself as a former associate of Diddy and acknowledged attending events with the embattled music mogul.

The lawsuit against Mr Buzbee claims the Houston attorney follows a "clear playbook" for extorting celebrities involving fabricating allegations and demanding letters seeking payment.

The lawsuit alleges that if the demands are not met, he turns to the media to apply public pressure.

Mr Buzbee, who denies wrongdoing, described the filing as a “last-ditch attempt” to stop him from naming the individual.

“It is obvious that the frivolous lawsuit filed against my firm is an aggressive attempt to intimidate or silence me and ultimately my clients,” he said in a statement sent to the BBC.

"No amount of money was included in the demand letters," he wrote. "No threats were made. The demand letters sent are no different than the ones routinely sent by lawyers across the country in all types of cases.”

A second legal claim was filed Monday, by an unnamed woman, in New York alleging abusive behaviour toward women.

The summons states Mr Buzbee abused his power as an attorney and violated the3 unnamed woman while representing her as a client.

“Plaintiff brings these causes of action to address Defendant's misconduct, which began with his assault of Plaintiff and escalated during his representation of her in divorce proceedings, where he prioritized concealing his actions over safeguarding her legal interests,” the claim states.

In a statement to the BBC, the attorney who filed the suit, Jeremy Bohrer called Mr Buzbee a hypocrite.

“There is nothing worse than when a black hat masquerades as a white hat.”

Mr Buzbee has not yet responded to the second lawsuit. BBC News has reached out for comment.


Zoe Ball quits Radio 2 Breakfast, Scott Mills taking over

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzre423y2o, today

Zoe Ball has announced she is stepping down as presenter of Radio 2's Breakfast Show in December.

Ball said: “After six incredible years on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, it’s time for me to step away from the very early mornings and focus on family."

She will remain on the station, and said more news on what that would involve would be announced in the new year.

Ball later announced that Scott Mills will be her replacement, moving from his afternoon show slot on the station.

Ball's last show will be on Friday 20 December, "just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans," she told listeners on her Tuesday show.

Telling her listeners about her decision, she said: "I've decided it's time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.

"We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats."

She added she would also miss her colleagues, saying they were "like family to me".

The early morning presenter added: "But I won’t miss the 4am alarm call, if I'm completely honest.

"You know I love you all to bits."

Mills said: “Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1.

"She's done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”

Speaking on his afternoon show later on Tuesday, Mills told his listeners: "I can’t thank you enough for how lovely you all were when I took over from Steve (Wright), and I know that you’re going to extend that love to Trevor Nelson.

"Honestly, I can't wait to start with you every morning."

Ball heaped praise on her successor: “Scott and I go way back to our Radio 1 days, when he was doing early mornings before me. He’s been a close friend for years, and I’m beyond thrilled it’s him taking over the Breakfast Show.

"Breakfast has always been his dream. He’s not only a blooming brilliant producer but one of the best in radio. I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”

Mills recently stood in for Ball when she took a few weeks off from her show.

Trevor Nelson, who currently presents in the evenings Monday to Thursday, will replace Mills as the presenter of the 2pm to 4pm weekday afternoon show from January.

Nelson said: "I'm looking to have lots of fun and will be bringing a bit of soul to the new show."

Meanwhile, DJ Spoony will extend his weekly edition of The Good Grove (Friday nights - 9-11pm) to four weekly shows on Monday – Thursday nights and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco will be extended from one to two hours, kicking off on Friday nights at 9pm.

Ball first joined BBC Radio in October 1997 as the co-host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with co-presenter Kevin Greening. From October 1998 to March 2000, Zoe hosted the programme solo, the first woman to do so.

Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: "Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019.

"I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that that she'll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family."

She was the BBC's highest-paid on-air female presenter in 2023/24.

Her salary of between £950,000 and £954,999 ranked her second on the list of top-earning talent behind Gary Lineker, according to the corporation's annual report published in July.

Many more stars don't make the list, with several of them almost certainly earning more than Ball and Lineker but they are not named because the BBC does not have to disclose the salaries of stars who are paid through production companies.

The latest figures from radio industry body Rajar state that Ball's programme is the most listened to breakfast show in the UK.

But it dipped by 146,000 listeners to 6.28 million in the most recent quarter, according to industry figures from Rajar.

BBC Radio 2 is the UK’s most listened to radio station, with a weekly audience of 13.3 million, the figures show.

At the 2024 Audio and Radio Industry Awards, also known as the Arias, Scott Mills won gold for the best music entertainment show, while Ball won bronze for the best music breakfast show.


Barry McGuigan opens up about death of daughter on I'm a Celebrity

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd57m7m5rlo, today

Former professional boxer Barry McGuigan has opened about the death of his daughter, while appearing on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

Actress Danika McGuigan died five weeks after being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2019, aged 33.

She had played Danielle in BBC Three comedy Can't Cope, Won't Cope and appeared in several films.

In an emotional conversation, McGuigan told his jungle campmates on the ITV reality show about how she originally recovered from leukaemia as a child after two years of treatment.

"She had leukaemia, when I was making the movie The Boxer with Daniel Day Lewis, three weeks from the end I had to leave because she'd been diagnosed with leukaemia, they thought she wasn't going to get better but she fought back and she won it," he said.

"She had two years of chemo, she was good, she came back."

When the Irishman started becoming visibly upset, his campmates offered their support.

"You're a man going through pain and you're vulnerable about it, that takes strength. There is no rules to grieving... it's a reflection of your love," N-Dubz star Tulisa Contostavlos said.

"It was hard for weeks in the hospital, just watching, shocking," McGuigan said tearfully.

"Thank you, you're all so lovely, I really appreciate it," he added.

McGuigan, a former professional boxer who became World Featherweight Champion in 1985, is on the 24th series of the reality TV show alongside celebrities including Danny Jones from McFly, TV presenter Jane Moore and Coleen Rooney.

Later in the episode, Rooney, who is married to ex-England footballer Wayne Rooney, became emotional over the loss of her sister Rosie, after McGuigan spoke about Danika.

"She was 14 when she died, she'd be 26 now. It's hard to lose a child, I've always said that... so we're lucky to have what we've got," she said.

Rosie had a rare genetic disorder called Rett syndrome.

At the time of her death in 2013, Rooney posted a tribute on social media, writing that she and her family were "absolutely heart broken to have lost our angel Rosie... we love you more than words can say."

Rett syndrome is a neurological disorder that causes profound physical and communication disabilities. It affects around one in 10,000 girls born each year and rarely occurs in boys.

Separately, Rooney also spoke about going to court in the libel trial with Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, saying it was her "worst nightmare."

Rooney had accused Vardy of leaking her private information to the press and a judge found her post claiming this to be the case was "substantially true".

She was asked by a campmate if she was scared making the social media post.

"No, because I just didn't think it would have the impact it did, because I was just that sick and tired of it, it was draining," Rooney said.

She added: "What got me, over the whole thing, was it became a bit of a joke and that's really disappointing, it wasn't a joke for me.

"...But no one knew the full story."


Wicked to Gladiator II: 12 of the best films to watch this November

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241031-wicked-to-gladiator-ii-12-of-the-best-films-to-watch-this-november, today

From the big-screen debut of a musical theatre classic to the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's Roman epic, these are the films to see this month.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

The story behind The Seed of the Sacred Fig is almost as remarkable as what's on screen. Its writer-director, Mohammad Rasoulof, had served time in prison in Iran for speaking out against the regime, and so he shot the film in secret. Shortly after it was chosen to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, Rasoulof was sentenced to eight more years in prison, but he managed to flee the country, and made it to Cannes in time for the red-carpet premiere. The Seed of the Sacred Fig went on to be one of the festival's most acclaimed films. Its central characters, Iman (Misagh Zare) and Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), are determined to stay out of trouble after Iman is promoted to a well-paid government job, so tensions rise when their two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), show signs of rebelling. "This searing domestic thriller deserves the widest audience possible," says Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. "Rasoulof crafts an extraordinarily gripping allegory about the corrupting costs of power and the suppression of women under a religious patriarchy that crushes the very people it claims to protect."

Released on 27 November in the US

The Piano Lesson

The Piano Lesson is a family affair. Adapted from August Wilson's Pulitzer prize-winning play, this supernatural drama is produced by Denzel Washington, directed by one of his sons, Malcolm Washington, and stars another of them, John David Washington. The story is a family affair, too. John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler play a brother and sister, Boy Willie and Berniece. When Boy Willie returns home to Pittsburgh in 1936 after a stint in prison, he argues that they should sell a prized heirloom, a 100-year-old piano which is carved with the faces of their enslaved forebears. The siblings' uncle, meanwhile, is played by Samuel L Jackson – who had the role of Boy Willie when Wilson's play opened in 1987. "With performances that will resonate and a directorial debut that will not soon be forgotten, The Piano Lesson is a lesson in love, friendship and family," says Carla Renata in The Wrap, "it serves as a reminder that generational wealth is not just monetary, but emotionally and genetically tied to our ancestors."

Released on 8 November in the US, the UK and Australia, and 22 November on Netflix internationally

Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard is known for such hard-edged contemporary thrillers as The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan, and the plot of his latest film, Emilia Pérez, suggests that it's more of the same: Zoe Saldaña stars as a lawyer who agrees to help a Mexican gangster (Karla Sofía Gascón) have gender reassignment surgery, so that she can start a new life as Emilia. The twist is that the film is a musical, which means that Saldaña and her co-stars, including Selena Gomez, keep belting out songs written by Camille, a French pop star. "Emilia Pérez is a hip-swaggering, trigger-clicking, scalpel-wielding work of weird brilliance," says Nick Howells in the Evening Standard. "It's a gloriously original tribute to anyone who truly dares to go their own way, but particularly the amazing women who do it under extreme fire."

Released on 1 November in the US, and 13 November on Netflix internationally

Here

Robert Zemeckis is the director, Eric Roth is the screenwriter, Tom Hanks plays the hero and Robin Wright plays the heroine. The last time you could say that about a film it was Forrest Gump, 30 years ago, but the four old colleagues have reunited at last – and it's for a project that is similarly ambitious in the way it hops through time and breaks technical boundaries. Based on Richard McGuire's graphic novel, Here tells the story of a couple's marriage, but it does so by focusing on one room, as seen from one angle, throughout the decades. It even shows how that same view would have appeared in the distant past and the far future. "The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does," Zemeckis told Anthony Breznican in Vanity Fair. "It's actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented. But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture."

Released on 1 November in the US and 29 November in Canada

Juror #2

Ridley Scott may have directed Gladiator II when he was 86, but he's a whippersnapper compared to Clint Eastwood, who has just completed his fortieth film as director at the age of 94. "You know, honestly, I thought he would have stopped by now," said Eastwood's friend and collaborator, producer Robert Lorenz. "I talked to him just before Juror #2, [and] he said, 'No, I don't think I'm going to do any more.' So, I wouldn't be surprised if that is the last movie. But never say never. He's always full of surprises, that guy." Juror #2 may have a few surprises, as well. Written by Jonathan A Abrams, it's a courtroom thriller starring Nicholas Hoult as Justin Kemp, a family man who is selected for the jury in a high-profile murder trial. The defendant is accused of ramming his car into his girlfriend, but Justin remembers crashing his own car into something or someone on the dark and stormy night in question. Can he stop an innocent man being jailed without incriminating himself in the process?

Released on 1 November in the US, the UK, Canada and Ireland, and 14 November in Italy

Moana 2

Moana was an ocean-sized hit in 2016, so you can hardly blame Disney for taking us on further seafaring adventures with the Polynesian princess (Auli'i Cravalho) and her demigod buddy, Maui (Dwayne Johnson). The plan was, though, that there would be a live-action remake, featuring most of the same actors as the cartoon, plus an animated television series that would stream on Disney+. It was only in February of this year that the studio announced that it was changing course: the live-action Moana would be delayed, and the series would be repurposed as a feature film. Again, you can hardly blame Disney: the company's last two big-screen cartoons – Strange World in 2022 and Wish in 2023 – were notorious flops. Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, conceded that Disney would be: "leaning a little bit more into sequels and franchises" as a result, but he had high hopes for Moana 2: "This was originally developed as a series, but we were impressed with what we saw, and we knew it deserved a theatrical release."

Released on 27 November in cinemas internationally

Gladiator II

Ever since Gladiator came out in 2000, people have been trying to work out how to make a sequel – not an easy task, given that the hero of the original film, Russell Crowe's Maximus Decimus Meridius, was killed at the end. Crowe even commissioned a screenplay from Nick Cave, the rock star, in which Maximus meets the Roman gods in the underworld before being reincarnated. Still, enough time has passed now that there's a simpler way of carrying on Ridley Scott's Roman saga. Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) – and, perhaps, the son of Maximus, too. After his family is killed by the soldiers of General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), Lucius is trained in combat by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave who is plotting to overthrow the Emperor (Joseph Quinn). "Gladiator II is much bigger, rawer, and more violent than the original," says Gabriella Paiella in GQ. "The sprawling battle sequences, yes, but also the man-to-man scrappy combat. You will spend much of the film mid-wince."

Released on 22 November in cinemas internationally

Wicked

This film of the Wizard of Oz spin-off musical is directed by John M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights), and it stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, alongside Ariana Grande as Galinda Upland, the future Glinda the Good. At first, they are roommates at the magical Shiz University, so how do they become enemies? Audiences won't get the answer to that question for another year. Wicked may be 160 minutes long, but it only covers half of the show: for the first time ever, a Hollywood musical is being released in two parts, and the second instalment isn't coming out until November 2025. "As we prepared the production over the last year," explained Chu, "it became impossible to wrestle the story of Wicked into a single film without doing some real damage to it… With more space, we can tell the story as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters."

Released on 22 November in cinemas internationally

A Real Pain

Anyone who has seen Kieran Culkin in Succession and Jesse Eisenberg in, well, anything will know how far apart their usual screen personas are. Eisenberg tends to play uptight and anxious characters, whereas Culkin, says Peter Howell in the Toronto Star, "is like a human exclamation mark, eager to be seen and to make a scene". This gulf between the two is filled with hilarious and poignant disagreements in A Real Pain, a highly acclaimed, heartfelt comedy drama written, directed and produced by Eisenberg. He and Culkin play cousins who have grown apart, but who reunite for a road trip through Poland in honour of their late grandmother. "Cue the comic clashing, accented by an artful Chopin piano score," says Howell, "but Eisenberg doesn't force the laughs as he subtly explores the double meaning of the title. He's developing a humanistic style in the vein of Hal Ashby and Alexander Payne and it's a joy to watch."

Released on 1 November in the US

Blitz

British films about World War Two tend to revolve around the combatants (Dunkirk), the spies (Operation Mincemeat) and the leaders (Darkest Hour), but Steve McQueen's Blitz shows what life was like for the ordinary citizens, the people of London who endured nightly Luftwaffe bombings. Central among these are two East Enders, a single mother (Saoirse Ronan) and her nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan). Along with thousands of other London children, George is packed off on a train to the countryside for his own safety, but he is determined to go home, so he sneaks back into the war-blasted metropolis. McQueen, the maker of the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, has written and directed an adventure film "that feels new and revelatory", says Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent, "purely because it's being viewed through the eyes of its singular director – expressionist yet rarely sentimental, disquieting in its terrors yet tender in its hope, and profoundly interested in the ordinary lives of others".

Released on 1 November in the US and the UK, and 22 November on Apple TV+ internationally

Queer

Luca Guadagnino – the director of Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and Challengers – has made another of his lavish dramas about intensely passionate, but not necessarily happy relationships. This one is a steamy adaptation of William Burroughs' autobiographical novel, Queer. Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, a dissolute US ex-pat who drifts from bar to bar in Mexico City in the 1950s. He is besotted by a handsome younger man (Drew Starkey), and fixated on finding a herb in a South American jungle that could grant him telepathic powers. "It's not just the explicit love scenes [that] leave little to the imagination," says David Fear in Rolling Stone. "What's shocking is the vulnerability that the actor shows… Embodying Burroughs' alter ego and cycling through Lee's lust, jealousy, world-weariness, neediness and bliss, Craig cracks this smitten, doomed romantic wide open."

Released on 27 November in the US

September 5

On 5 September 1972, a Palestinian terrorist group took several Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics, which ended with the deaths of 11 athletes and five of the terrorists. The incident was the subject of Kevin Macdonald's Oscar-winning Storyville documentary, One Day in September, and its aftermath was the subject of Steven Spielberg's thriller, Munich. Now a new docudrama directed by Tim Fehlbaum tells the story from the perspective of a US news crew that was on the spot. Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch play the ABC Sports broadcasters who assumed that they would be reporting on nothing more important than swimming, but who are now faced with staggering technical and ethical challenges. Is it justifiable to put the potentially horrific events on live television? And if it is, how can they do so with the limited equipment they have available? "Editor Hansjorg Weissbrich keeps this intimate drama rocketing along, harnessing the frantic energy of different individuals," says Tim Grierson in Screen Daily. "Operating in a stripped-down docufiction manner that emphasises the tense circumstances… September 5 recounts that tragic day with a combination of electricity and dread, drawing on strong performances for a meditation on the media's responsibilities during such a volatile situation."

Released on 27 November in the US

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11 of the best TV shows to watch this November

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241028-11-of-the-best-tv-shows-to-watch-this-november, today

From a small-screen spinoff of the Denis Villeneuve Dune films to the return of Sharon Horgan's Bad Sisters, these are the shows to stream this month.

The Day of the Jackal

Casting is the biggest lure in this action thriller, with Eddie Redmayne as an assassin-for-hire, code-named Jackal. The character first appeared in Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel, which became a 1973 film with Edward Fox, but the story has been updated to the present. Now Lashana Lynch is Bianca, an MI6 agent determined to catch the Jackal. "I will find him and kill him myself," she tells her sceptical bosses. He varies his look with disguises, eluding her as she chases him across Europe amid explosions and shootouts. Redmayne is known for more sympathetic roles, like Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, but he has said that playing this villain was part of the series' appeal. "They have a really complex moral compass and do horrendous things, but are also extraordinarily talented," Redmayne told Vanity Fair about The Jackal and Bianca. "You're drawn to them and repelled by them in equal measure." Charles Dance and Richard Dormer also feature in the show, which was created by Ronan Bennett (Top Boy).

The Day of the Jackal premieres 7 November on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK and 14 November on Peacock in the US

Bad Sisters

This show about sisters and murder in Dublin won the 2023 Bafta for best drama series, but it is also a delicious dark comedy. In this second season the five Garvey sisters can't avoid more fallout from the past, when Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) killed her abusive husband, and her siblings helped cover it up. Now Grace marries a new love, apparently borrowed from Sandra Oh because he is played by Owen McDonnell, Oh's husband on Killing Eve. Sharon Horgan, who also created Bad Sisters, plays the responsible Eva, with Eve Hewson as the freewheeling baby of the family, Becka, Sarah Green as Bibi, and Eva Birthistle as Ursula, a nurse whose skills are handy because people around that family tend to need medical help. Two terrific new cast additions include Fiona Shaw as a nosy neighbour and Thaddea Graham as a smart, underestimated young detective who has her suspicions about the Garveys. The plot often hinges on near-escape – how many times can the sisters narrowly avoid being locked up? – and it is great fun to watch them try.

Bad Sisters premieres 13 November on Apple TV+ internationally

Say Nothing

Patrick Raden Keefe's 2018 non-fiction book about the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland was compelling because of its strong narrative and focus on characters, which makes it a natural source for this fact-based drama. The story begins when Jean McConville, a suspected member of the Irish Republican Army, is abducted. The series then takes us inside the IRA. Lola Pettigrew plays the central character, Dolours Price, who along with her sister, Marian (Hazel Doupe), was imprisoned for setting off a car bomb in London in 1973. Maxine Peake plays an older version of Dolours, who told her own story later in life (the centrepiece of the 2018 documentary I, Dolours) and who died in 2013. Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) plays the IRA strategist Brendan Hughes, and Josh Finan is Gerry Adams, the best known of the real-life characters, who was instrumental in the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 and has always denied an association with the IRA. The show may be historical, but its theme of political violence is resonant and timely.

Say Nothing premieres 14 November on Disney + in the UK and Hulu in the US

Cross

Nothing says confidence more than renewing a show for a second season before the first has even premiered, which is the case with this crime series based on James Patterson's Alex Cross novels. (The earliest was published in 1993 and the most recent just last year.) Aldis Hodge, who has shown intensity and charisma in smaller roles in One Night in Miami and The Invisible Man, stars as Cross, a police detective and forensic psychologist in Washington DC, on the trail of a serial killer. John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa), his best friend and partner on the force, is by his side as the widowed Cross grapples with the psychological fallout from his job while raising two small children. The Cross novels have already been adapted into three films, with Morgan Freeman starring in two sturdy ones, Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001) and Tyler Perry in a flop, Alex Cross (2012). Still, the odds favour a success, and a breakout for Hodge.

Cross premieres 14 November on Amazon Prime internationally

Dune: Prophecy

One of the most intriguing aspects of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films is the Bene Gesserit, the religious order of women who have developed supernatural powers. Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), mother of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is a member. This spinoff takes place in the same Dune universe, and tells the origin story of the Bene Gesserit. Emily Watson stars as Valya Harkonnen and Olivia Williams as her sister, Tula, founders of the order. "We like to say this show is set 10,000 years BC, meaning 'Before Chalamet'," Watson told Empire magazine. Mark Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, ruler of the Imperium. The show, one of the season's most anticipated, has a built-in Dune audience. But Jessica Barden, who plays the younger Valya, tells Den of Geek that the series may undercut movie viewers' expectations that the Harkonnens are evil. "Is this a villain?" she asks. Or, "Is this just a regular young person who has a thing she wants to avenge in the way we all do sometimes?" One thing that hasn't changed is the landscape. There is a lot, a lot of sand.

Dune: Prophecy premieres 17 November on HBO and Max in the US and 18 November on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK

Landman 

It seems like a strange Venn diagram, where roughhewn Billy Bob Thornton and suave Jon Hamm land in the same series, but here it is, part of the ever-expanding Taylor Sheridan universe. Unlike Sheridan's biggest hit, Yellowstone, this one is not set on a ranch but in the oil fields of Texas, with Thornton as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager for an oil company, and Hamm as Monty Miller, an oil baron. The men and their families have history. The cast also includes Andy Garcia, Ali Larter and Demi Moore, who plays Monty's wife, Cami. The show was created by Sheridan and Christian Wallace, host of the 2019 podcast Boomtown, which inspired the series. Official descriptions are not usually worth repeating, but this one, echoing the podcast's, is too grandiose to ignore. Paramount says Landman is "an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fuelling a boom so big it's reshaping our climate, our economy, our geopolitics." Also, it's a soap opera.

Landman premieres on 17 November on Paramount+ in the US and 18 November in the UK

Interior Chinatown

The standup and actor Jimmy O Yang (Silicon Valley) stars in this action dramedy as Willis Wu, an actor playing a small part in a Law and Order-style crime series called Black & White, a show within this deliberately head-spinning series. Charles Yu adapted Interior Chinatown from his 2020 novel, which is written in the form of a television script, and wittily tackles issues of Asian stereotypes and representation. Willis, unable to break out of small background roles like a waiter in a Chinese restaurant, says in the trailer, with good reason, "I feel like I'm a background character in someone else's story." Things change when Detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet) recruits him to help investigate a crime because he knows Los Angeles' Chinatown, a twist that might lead him to his missing brother, who vanished 12 years before. Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show and Crazy Rich Asians) effectively delivers his comic lines as Willis's best friend, Fatty Choi. Taika Waititi, an executive producer of the show, also directed the first episode.

Interior Chinatown premieres 19 November on Hulu in the US

A Man on the Inside

Ted Danson, a master of the sitcom from Cheers in the 1980s to, more recently, The Good Place, stars in another, a role that would seem preposterous if it weren't also true. A Man on the Inside is based on the 2020 Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, which won the Oscar for best international film, about a man who goes undercover at a nursing home to investigate possible abuses. Danson plays Charles, a retired widower in San Francisco with time on his hands, who answers an ad looking for a spy. Stephanie Beatriz plays the manager of the home Charles infiltrates, and Stephen McKinley Henderson and Sally Struthers play residents. The show was created by Mike Schur, known for sophisticated sitcoms including The Good Place, Brooklyn 99 and Parks and Recreation. The combination of Danson and Schur makes this fictional version of the real story sound especially promising.

A Man on the Inside premieres 21 November on Netflix internationally

Get Millie Black

The Jamaican-born novelist Marlon James, whose books include the Booker Prize winner A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) and the Africa-set fantasy Black Leopard, Red Wolf (2019) created this crime series, with a setting close to home. Tamara Lawrance (The Long Song, Time), plays Millie Black, a detective formerly with Scotland Yard, who returns home to Jamaica to work for the Kingston police. (James's parents were both police detectives.) She and her partner, Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr), are soon embroiled in a disturbing missing person's case. Joe Dempsie (Gendry Baratheon on Game of Thrones) plays Luke Holborn, sent from Scotland Yard to investigate a case that may overlap with hers. "This is just another story about Jamaica," Millie says in the trailer "but like every story about this country, this is a ghost story" – a hint at the way James layers social awareness over crime-solving.

Get Millie Black premieres 25 November on HBO and Max in the US and 2025 on Channel 4 in the UK

The Madness

Colman Domingo, often seen on the Oscar campaign trail these days, (last year's Rustin, which earned him a nomination, and this year's Sing Sing) stars in this topical thriller as a television pundit, Muncie Daniels, who finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy. He stumbles across a dead body in the woods, which turns out to be the corpse of a white supremacist and Muncie is framed for the murder. His trajectory takes him from looking polished on television to hiding at night in a body of water reaching up to his neck. "It was a unique protagonist," Domingo has said of the role, adding cryptically that Muncie is "someone who has centrist beliefs, and now they're being thrust into the world to really hard-core believe in something, and to reexamine the people that they believed were possible enemies." He also added, "We do live in a very mad, mad world right now."

The Madness premieres 28 November on Netflix internationally

The Agency

Michael Fassbender stars in this thriller based on the great, globally popular French series The Bureau. He plays a CIA agent, Martian, a version of the character played by Matthieu Kassovitz in the original. After spending years undercover, Martian has now been reassigned to the London Station, but carries the baggage from all that time living under a false identity, as he resists the company psychologist, reengages with a former love and grapples with a new global threat. In addition to Fassbender, there are other big names all around. Richard Gere plays Martian's boss and Jodie Turner-Smith is his ex-lover, along with Jeffrey Wright, John Magaro and Katherine Waterston. The show was written by the playwright Jez Butterworth and his brother John-Henry Butterworth, who together have worked on films including Edge of Tomorrow and Ford v Ferrari. And Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) directed the first two episodes. If The Agency resembles The Bureau, it will be endlessly taut and suspenseful.

The Agency premieres 29 November on Paramount+ with Showtime internationally

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Wag the Dog to All the President's Men: 10 of the best films about US presidential elections

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240927-10-of-the-best-films-about-us-presidential-elections, today

The tension is building in the race for the White House – and that tension runs through Hollywood's most gripping political dramas, comedies and documentaries.

The current campaign may be the most tumultuous in US history, with a late-in-the-day candidate change and two dramatic debates, along with the possibility (again) of the first woman president. But the race for the White House has intrigued film-makers for decades, with some startling results. Even Frank Capra, the goody-two-shoes of US cinema, cast a sceptical eye on the process. Some films are thinly veiled fictions, others prescient fantasies, but all find themes that go the heart of US democracy and ideals. Here are some of the best presidential election movies, including an under-appreciated gem from Mike Nichols and Elaine May, another starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, and a West Wing warm-up from Aaron Sorkin. 

1. Primary Colors (1998) dir Mike Nichols

One of Mike Nichols' best and least-known films, with a glittering screenplay by Elaine May, this satire follows a not-at-all veiled fictional version of Bill Clinton through the primaries on his way to the White House. John Travolta is unlikely but brilliant as Jack Stanton, a Southern governor who can charm his way out of anything. Travolta captures the Clinton charisma as well as the empathetic "I feel your pain" glances without becoming a caricature. Emma Thompson plays his wife, Susan, a Hillary before she had a political career of her own, but whose instincts are as sharp as anyone's. Based on the 1996 novel by the journalist Joe Klein (originally published as Anonymous), the film goes behind the scenes as the campaign tries to dispel rumours – some true, some not – of Stanton's womanising. Adrian Lester, as an idealistic young campaign manager, embodies the theme of lost innocence that runs through so many movies about US elections. The film is also very funny even as it raises one of the fundamental questions of 20th and 21st-Century politics: does a little spin and subterfuge matter if it helps put someone who'll do the best for the US in the White House? Even Lincoln stretched the truth, Stanton argues.

2. All the President's Men (1976) dir Alan J Pakula

One of the great films of our time, All the President's Men is of course front-and-centre about journalism. But take another look as you'll see how much it is also about dirty campaign politics. When Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, ­track down the truth behind the Watergate break-in and the cover-up that led to Richard Nixon's resignation, much of their investigation leads them to CREEP, the all-too-accurate acronym for the Republicans' Committee to Re-elect the President. That committee's bungled attempt to steal information from the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building was just the first clue to exposing all sorts of other campaign creepiness from illegal payments to character assassination. Still suspenseful every time you watch it, the film beautifully weaves together many threads about the US. The corruption behind Nixon's 1972 campaign is one of its themes with enduring, cautionary impact.

3. Wag the Dog (1997) dir Barry Levinson

This satire from the 1990s seems timelier than ever now, in the age of artificial intelligence and disputes about what constitutes a fact. Robert De Niro is at his droll best as Conrad Brean, a campaign consultant called in when a story about the president's affair with a young woman breaks two weeks before the election that will keep him in office. (One jaw-dropping aside: the film was released just a month before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. The Clinton presidency really was a gift to film-makers.) To save the campaign, Brean recruits a Hollywood producer – hilariously played as the ultimate narcissist by Dustin Hoffman – to film evidence of a war with Albania that doesn't really exist. They even find a war hero who wasn't a hero and make him a celebrity. The press buys it, the public buys it and who's to say what's real anymore? The film's portrayal of how politics and Hollywood merge is taken for granted now, but David Mamet's biting screenplay and Barry Levinson's sharp direction hold up perfectly.

4. The War Room (1993) dir DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus

DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's groundbreaking documentary is based on amazing behind-the-scenes access to Bill Clinton's first run for president in 1992, and stands as the real-life version of Primary Colors. Clinton appears only briefly. The central characters are the strategist James Carville and the communications director, a baby-faced George Stephanopoulos, long before he became a news anchor. A sign on the wall of the campaign office gives us Carville's now famous line about what mattered most: "The Economy. Stupid." Stephanopoulos is seen putting out media fires, including a phone conversation in which he tells a reporter working on a rumour about Clinton that he will look foolish and have no future if he writes that lie, almost making that response sound like a fact not a threat. (That particular rumour has, in fact, long since been discredited.) The film is exhilarating as it captures all the youthful energy of a campaign running on hope and adrenaline.

5. The Best Man (1964) dir Franklin J Schaffner

Gore Vidal's screenplay is firmly in the JFK era, but its take on the machinations to choose a presidential nominee at a split convention still goes to the heart of many issues in campaign politics, including money, promises made in exchange for support and skeletons in the candidates' closets. Henry Fonda plays William Russell, the experienced secretary of state, fondly called an egghead by one of his supporters. "Do you think people mistrust intellectuals like you in politics?" one reporter asks him. Senator Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson, who the year before played Kennedy as a war hero in the hagiographic PT-109) is his slick, young, ends-justifies-the means rival. Each candidate has dirt on the other, but will they use it? Vidal takes a jab at the era's homophobia by making one of the secrets the rumour of a gay affair, and complicates the issue when it turns out that one of the rumours is false. The noble ending seems forced, but until then the film remains full of intrigue and soul-searching questions.

6. State of the Union (1948) dir Frank Capra

This strong but little-known Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn drama was directed by Frank Capra, and its sharp-eyed cynicism about the political process makes it one of his least corny films. Tracy plays Grant Matthews, a successful businessman married to Mary (Hepburn) but involved in an affair with a politically ambitious newspaper heiress, Kay Thorndyke, played by Angela Lansbury. Kay wants to use her money and influence to put Grant in the White House, but they'll need Mary to play along as the loyal spouse. Hepburn captures Mary's hurt and disappointment when she realises she's being used as a campaign prop (the spouse as prop is one of the most intractable aspects of running for office). Tracy makes Grant an essentially good man who for a time is co-opted by ambition and political handlers. Like any Capra film, this one an idealistic ending, but its true interest for us today is its clarity about the seductiveness of power and the compromises that go into electing a president.

7. The American President (1995) dir Rob Reiner

If you love The West Wing but wish it were more of a romcom, this is the film for you. Before creating his series, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for this Rob Reiner politics-tinged romance about Andrew Shepherd, charmingly played by Michael Douglas, a widowed president and single father running for re-election. When he falls for an environmental lobbyist, Sydney Ellen Wade, played with equal charm by Annette Bening, his advisors tell him to keep her out of the public eye and his rivals start attacking her. Martin Sheen, before he was President Bartlett on The West Wing, plays Shepherd's chief of staff and best friend, and there is a hint of the television series in the wrangling to get votes for Shepherd's crime bill to pass through Congress, along with the question of whether he will jeopardise his re-election by supporting an environmental bill. But the most characteristic Sorkin element is the rosy idealism about the possibility of politics to do some good, an idea that makes this a buoyant outlier among more typical, sceptical 1990s political movies.

8. The Ides of March (2011) dir George Clooney

This dynamic film starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, who also directed, didn't make much of an impact when it was released, possibly because its story, with a whiff of the Clinton sex scandals, might have seemed tired during the Obama years. Seen now, it smartly taps into the persistent theme of lost political innocence, with Gosling as Stephen Meyers, a young but savvy campaign strategist, who goes to work for Mike Morris (Clooney) a politically gifted governor running for president. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Stephen's jaded boss and Paul Giamatti is the manager of a rival campaign in a cast that includes Jeffrey Wright and Marisa Tomei. Evan Rachel Wood plays a young Morris intern, and the very mention of that role is enough to hint that you know where the plot is heading. But the gamesmanship among the candidates, and between the campaigns and the press, is so smart and well-played that the predictability hardly matters.

9. Game Change (2012) dir Jay Roach

You might laugh to keep from crying at this fact-based film about how John McCain's campaign chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate, a cynical, haphazard move that backfired in every possible way. Jay Roach's comedy-of-errors stays close to reality, based on the reported book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and at times edits actual reporters and politicians into scenes with the actors. Woody Harrelson plays Steve Schmidt, the strategist who insists that McCain (Ed Harris) has to do something game-changing, like choosing a woman, to have a chance of beating Obama. With time running out, and little vetting, they choose the inexperienced but telegenic Palin. Julianne Moore brings Palin to life with remarkable verisimilitude as she captures her odd inflections of language, and with some sympathy for how far she is out of her depth. She is so clueless about foreign affairs, and for that matter foreign countries, that Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson), the director of communications who is trying to guide her through, just gives up. Sobering yet still a romp, this film might be the only silver lining in the whole Palin debacle.

10. Head of State (2003) dir Chris Rock

The Obama presidency was just a gleam in America's eye when Chris Rock wrote, directed and starred in this comedy as Mays Gilliam, a lowly local politician in Washington, DC who is recruited by the Democrats to run for president when their candidate dies shortly before the election. It's all a ruse: the party politicians want to get credit for running a black candidate, who is sure to lose, while keeping the spot open for one of their own insiders next term. The joke is on them, of course. Mays is a straight-talking guy, in touch with working people and willing to tell them the no-nonsense truth about everything, pointing to inequities and getting crowds to chant, "That ain't right!"  Rock's stand-up comedy is often satiric, but this film is more broadly comic – Bernie Mac plays Mays' loud, brash brother – and more earnest. It echoes the question raised way back in 1948 by State of the Union: can a truth-teller win? Head of State doesn't entirely work. It's distracting when the rapper Nate Dog pops in and out of the film with musical narration. But it is breezy and fun, so ignore that 30 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

11. Bonus Short: Betty Boop for President (1932) dir Dave Fleischer

Back when the very idea of a woman president was preposterous, Betty Boop ran. The cartoon vamp campaigned with a song in this six-and-a-half-minute animated comedy, with promises of ice cream and shared wealth. "Some of you have money / While some are poor, you know," she sings. "If you send me to Washington / I'll just divide the dough." She imagines herself in front of a split Congress, the elephants on one side and the donkeys on the other disagreeing on everything. The short is a delightful little oddity, but honestly, there have been worse candidates.

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Wicked review: This 'drawn-out' and 'self-important' film proves the musical didn't need to be split into two parts

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241119-wicked-review, today

There are decent performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande – but this flat opening instalment of The Wizard of Oz prequel may not convert those who aren't already super-fans.

One of the key things to know about Wicked, the big-screen adaptation of the smash-hit Broadway musical, is that it's not actually a big-screen adaptation of the smash-hit Broadway musical: it's an adaptation of the first half. The title, on the screen if not on the posters, is Wicked Part One, and it ends with the caption "To Be Continued", so viewers should be warned. We've had similar tricks played on us by the makers of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but it's still frustrating to realise that you're only halfway through the plot after two-and-a-half hours, and that Part Two won't be in cinemas for another year. It's like being turfed out of a theatre at the interval.

Whatever the film-makers' reasons, you can't help resenting their arrogance. The implication is that their narrative is so profound that it demands a full five hours of screentime. And Wicked won't convince everyone that that's the case.

For the benefit of those who haven't seen the show, which premiered on Broadway in 2003 and has been running ever since, it's a spin-off of L Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which delves into the back story of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. It begins near the end of the classic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, with the Wicked Witch having been dissolved by water splashed on her by Dorothy. Glinda visits the Munchkin village to share the glad tidings, whereupon the Munchkins ask her about the friendship she had with the Wicked Witch in days gone by, back when her name was Galinda. And so begins a tale that is best described as Harry Potter meets Mean Girls. Mostly set within the Italianate walls of Oz's off-puttingly named Shiz University, it charts the relationship of the put-upon Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo, and the confident Galinda, played by Ariana Grande-Butera (ie the pop star known as Ariana Grande, but credited onscreen with her full name).

Elphaba was born with pea-green skin, so she has always felt like an outsider. Her telekinetic powers, which spring into life whenever she is angry, don't help matters, either. And, in fact, she has only come to Shiz University to keep an eye on her sister (Marissa Bode), who uses a wheelchair. Galinda, meanwhile, is the archetypal American queen bee, a clothing-obsessed blonde who is adored by everyone around her almost as much as she adores herself. These two loathe each other as soon as they are forced to share a room – they even sing a duet on the subject – and the situation is exacerbated when the university's sorcery teacher Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, who is no singer) favours Elphaba, and the handsome Prince Fiyero (a scene-stealing, swaggering Jonathan Bailey) favours Galinda. Or does he?

If you're already a fan of the musical, you'll probably be happy with the painstaking job that director John M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) has done in transferring it to the silver screen. There's a slick screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, the songs by Stephen Schwartz are big and rousing, and you can tell that armies of craftspeople have laboured for days over every wig, embroidered jacket, and decoration on the colourful, gleamingly artificial set. The two leads are well cast, too. Erivo is disarmingly sweet and vulnerable, while retaining a hint of latent menace, and Grande-Butera, who can hit notes so high that only dogs can hear them, is amusing as a blithely perky narcissist. She would have been an interesting Barbie if Margot Robbie hadn't played the role.

If you're not already a devotee of the musical, though, you may not be converted. The film ends with a song called Defying Gravity, so it's only fair to say that that's precisely what Wicked doesn't manage to achieve. It doesn't take flight. It doesn't have the terrific jokes, the startling twists or the stunning dance routines that might have cast a spell on you, and it's weighed down by under-developed subplots and under-used supporting characters (who presumably have their moment in Part Two), as well as by its own sense of self-importance. With every lung-busting empowerment anthem, Wicked seems to be declaring that it's a significant work of art. And yet the message about not mistreating people just because they have green skin isn't exactly subtle, and the questions the film answers aren't exactly urgent. Why does Elphaba wear a pointy hat? Why did Galinda change her name to Glinda? How can the flying monkeys fly? Why is the yellow brick road yellow? These aren't the most vital issues in the world, but if you are keen to see a Wizard of Oz prequel, I'd recommend Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful, which came out in 2013.

Wicked is drawn-out and bland in comparison. It might have been lighter on its feet if the editors had cut a subplot about magical talking animals, which doesn't add anything except several minutes of running time. And they could have cut Elphaba's sister, who is given perplexingly little to do. That way, the film could have been packed the whole musical into one fast-moving, satisfying entertainment. As it is, I have a strong suspicion that Wicked will work much better as the first part of a double bill, with Wicked Part 2 being shown after an interval. But we'll have to wait another year to know for sure.

★★★☆☆

Wicked is released on 22 November in UK and US cinemas

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'I just felt desperate to do something': Jennifer Lawrence and Malala on their film about the Afghan women fighting back

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241118-jennifer-lawrence-and-malala-on-their-film-about-the-afghan-women-fighting-back, today

Malala Yousafzai and Jennifer Lawrence tell the BBC about their new documentary Bread & Roses, which highlights the stories and voices of Afghan women resisting the Taliban.

It's being called "gender apartheid" by the UN. In August 2021, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. A generation of women who had new opportunities to work, study and hold public office under the previous government, found their lives overturned. Girls are refused formal secondary and university education, women are banned from most work sectors, and from using parks and gyms. Beauty salons have been closed. Now female voices are even forbidden to be heard in public. The Taliban has said the new laws are accepted in Afghan society, and in accordance with Islamic Sharia law. 

Bread & Roses is a documentary filmed from within Afghanistan by women who have resisted these restrictions on their lives. "I am taking a video, do not call me," Dr Zahra Mohammadi tells a caller in the film, as she runs downstairs to her workplace. 

Dr Mohammadi is a young dentist who celebrated her engagement just before the Taliban reached Kabul, a few weeks before the video is taken. She expresses hope to the audience that she can still work under the new government. "Up until now the Taliban have not bothered doctors, although they've just ordered me to remove my name upon the sign," she tells the camera.

Dr Mohammadi puts her office sign back up in a prominent position on the street, with her name still on it. It's also a sign of the courage she displays throughout the film.  Soon her dental practice is a secret hub for female activists, as the Taliban's restrictions closes secondary and university education opportunities for girls. As the film continues, female resistance is met with arrests, prison sentences, and disappearances.

Filmed without a narrator and made in the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashto, Bread & Roses (the title is taken from a political slogan adopted by 20th Century suffragettes) is a mainly fly-on-the-wall documentary that relies upon the main protagonists to film themselves. Which they do, at demonstrations where they demand "bread, education and freedom". They film when they're arrested at the protests, when they're sprayed with tear gas, and as their doors are being kicked down by the Taliban. "Girls educated up to 12th grade are stuck at home," says one older protester of the situation. "They had dreamed of being doctors, engineers and teachers. It's tragic. They had dreams."

The film may be directed by an Afghan film-maker living abroad, Sahra Mani (also the maker of a hard-hitting 2018 documentary about the rape of Afghan girls, A Thousand Girls Like Me) but Bread & Roses is backed by Hollywood. It's produced by Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, and executive produced by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, Malala Yousafzai, herself once the victim of a Taliban shooting. 

Lawrence tells the BBC that it was watching the news after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and what she saw unfolding for women, that spurred her into action as far back as 2021. "I just felt desperate to do something," she says. "And cameras help with helplessness." 

Lawrence says that she wanted to know if anyone was filming what was happening to Afghan women and girls from within the country. "It was important for us to get eyes inside Kabul because that's exactly what the Taliban did not want," she says. "So when we reached out to Sahra, as we were already familiar with her work, we found that she was already collecting footage from girls on the ground in Kabul."

The women in the film were taught how to use cameras, and how, if possible, not to get caught. "I spent time on the border of Afghanistan, to be able to be close to my team and to collect the material," Mani tells the BBC. "We built a team to train our protagonists how to film themselves and to do it in a safe way, so if their cell phones were checked by the Taliban, they don't find out about it." 

Making women's voices heard 

Lawrence isn't the first high-profile Hollywood celebrity to condemn the erosion of Afghan women's human rights. In September, Meryl Streep told a UN General Assembly event that a cat had more rights than a woman living in Afghanistan, because a cat may go out "and feel the Sun on her face". 

But Lawrence's activism follows other famous women who've put their names to documentaries highlighting recent experiences of Afghan women. Hillary and Chelsea Clinton were two of the producers on the 2022 film, In Her Hands, about Afghanistan's youngest ever female mayor, and the turmoil she experienced in the months leading up to the Taliban's takeover.

The Clintons and Lawrence have now also executive-produced a documentary on women's rights closer to home – Zurawski v Texas (2024), about women who were denied an abortion despite life-threatening circumstances and sued the state of Texas. As some women in the US say their rights over their bodies are being eroded, while others support more restrictive stricter abortion policies, does Lawrence use film-making for what she considers to be good causes? 

"I think that film-making is how I deal with life," she replies. "It's my artistic process and that's how I also process. And in a lot of ways, it's my only weapon when I'm watching something play out and you feel that impotent rage. Zurawski v Texas was extremely timely, as abortion was on the [US election] ballot.

"Women are dying because Roe v Wade was overturned, and the dialogue in America around abortion is just so fraught," Lawrence says. There's just such a disconnect on what Americans even think abortion is, and so that was really important to lend my voice to.

"Bread & Roses was more born from just a necessity, just watching it happen in the moment and just needing to do something." 

Malala thinks that the very act of filming was these Afghan women's own way of dealing with the heavy restrictions on their lives.

"It's a very powerful way of resistance for Afghan women to make their voices loud and clear and to make themselves visible against the Taliban, when they are using everything they have in their power to silence women," she tells the BBC. "In essence it's systematic oppression that they're imposing, they're controlling literally anything to do with a woman's life."

Malala points out that since the documentary was made, Afghan women face even more challenges. A recent decree by the Taliban forbids a woman's voice from being heard in public, which the Taliban says is based upon their interpretation of Sharia law. They cannot be heard singing or reading aloud from within their own homes. They must be veiled in public, including their faces.A Taliban spokesman told the BBC at the time that this edict is in accordance with Islamic Sharia law and that "any religious scholar can check its references". They also said they are "working on" the issue of female education. 

However, a psychologist working with Afghan women told the BBC this year that they were suffering from a "pandemic" of suicidal thoughts. "You closed the universities and schools, you might as well kill me now," shouts one woman in Bread & Roses, when told by an official to "shut up, or I will kill you right now". 

"You have brought us horror instead of safety," screams another woman at them in the documentary.

Although Dr Mohammadi opines in the film that "the Afghan woman is first oppressed at home by her father, brother or husband", a striking feature of Bread & Roses is the number of supportive men and boys in these women's lives, usually with their faces blurred for their safety. When the camera is focused on a night-time shot of the city of Kabul, female voices ring out shouting, "education is our right!" After a moment, a male voice is also heard clearly, joining in.

Malala tells the BBC she believes public pressure can ultimately force the Taliban into concessions. "They don't want women to even be in talks that are happening with different countries' representatives, they do not want women's rights to be on the agenda," she says.

"To resist them, we have to do all that they don't want us to do. Women have to be in those rooms. Women's rights have to be on the agenda, we have to call out gender apartheid and codify it into treaties, so that perpetrators like the Taliban are held accountable for the crimes that they're committing against Afghan women."

Such demands may feel far off. The BBC reported this year that female-led protests have stopped due to the reprisals, although some still post videos online with their faces covered. Sahra Mani says that with "safety as our main priority" when making the film, her main protagonists left Afghanistan before the film was released and their faces were shown. 

Mobile phone footage, in a moving epilogue to the film, shows an older woman in hiding, teaching a group of young women in English. "Now this is useful for university entrance exams," the woman says, as if nothing has changed. 

The message of Bread & Roses is summed up in the words of one activist who has to flee, taking a last look at her home country. 

"May history remember that once upon a time, such cruelty was permitted against the women of Afghanistan," she says, as she crosses the border into Pakistan. 

Bread & Roses is released on Apple TV+ from 22 November

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'I have been deceiving you… I'm sorry about that': The British politician who was caught faking his own death

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241114-john-stonehouse-the-british-politician-who-was-caught-faking-his-own-death, today

When John Stonehouse's clothes were found in a pile on Miami Beach on 20 November 1974, many people presumed that the UK Member of Parliament had drowned while swimming – until he turned up alive and well in Australia on Christmas Eve. In History looks at the stranger-than-fiction tale of the man who died twice.

When John Stonehouse hatched his plan to disappear completely, he was a troubled man. His political career had stalled, his dodgy business dealings left him facing financial ruin, he was accused of being a communist spy, and he was having an extra-marital affair with his secretary. In a move borrowed from the Frederick Forsyth novel, The Day of the Jackal, Stonehouse stole the identity of two dead men. He travelled on a business trip to Miami where he vanished, in November 1974, then hopped on another plane to Australia. The ruse lasted just over a month. It was British aristocrat Lord Lucan, another infamous fugitive who disappeared around the same time, who would inadvertently lead him to get caught in Australia.

And how did Stonehouse explain his actions? The British Member of Parliament insisted to the BBC in January 1975 that he was on "a fact-finding tour, not only in terms of geography but in terms of the inner self of a political animal".

To the British public in the late 1960s, he must have seemed like a man who had it all. Postmaster General at the age of 43, with a glamorous wife and three children, he was talked about as a future Labour prime minister. He was the man who oversaw the introduction of first- and second-class stamps, but for his political career, that role was as good as it got.

The rot began to set in when a defector from communist Czechoslovakia claimed in 1969 that the country had recruited the MP as an informer. Stonehouse protested his innocence to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who believed him. Such allegations were rife during the Cold War, but Stonehouse's political reputation was damaged. When the Labour Party lost the 1970 general election, there was no seat for Stonehouse on the opposition front bench. Disillusioned, he decided to devote more time to his London business interests – mostly export services he had developed through his international connections.

In 1971, Bangladesh's fight for independence from Pakistan fired Stonehouse with fresh enthusiasm. He became emotionally involved in the Bengali cause, becoming such a familiar and sympathetic figure there that when the war ended, he was made a citizen of the new state as a mark of respect. That was only the start.

He was asked to help set up the British Bangladesh Trust, a bank that would provide services for Bengali people in Britain. But the way the bank was being operated later drew critical comment from a Sunday newspaper and attracted investigators from the Fraud Squad and Department of Trade and Industry in London. The bad publicity and these official inquiries frightened away much of the bank's support, leaving Stonehouse deeply depressed and feeling he was also losing the respect of fellow MPs.

He concocted a plan to escape from it all. First, he forged a passport application in the name of Joseph Arthur Markham, a foundry worker who had recently died in his constituency of Walsall, in England's West Midlands. He turned this new identity into a globetrotting export consultant with bank accounts in London, Switzerland and Melbourne. He then established another identity in the name of Donald Clive Mildoon, who had also just died in Walsall. To help fund this new life, Stonehouse transferred large amounts of cash from his businesses into a series of bank accounts.

'A divided personality'

On 20 November 1974, Stonehouse vanished while, it seemed, he was swimming in the sea in Miami, Florida. There was no trace of the 49-year-old apart from the pile of clothes he left behind on the beach. Was he swept away by the ocean? Was he murdered and put inside a concrete block found near Miami Beach? Had he been kidnapped?

His wife Barbara was in no doubt that there had been a tragic accident. She told BBC News: "I've heard some extraordinary rumours and they're all so much out of character with my husband's personality that they're just not worth answering or worth thinking about. I'm convinced in my mind that it was a drowning accident. All the evidence that we've had points to the fact that he was drowned."

In London, police had their own suspicions. Sheila Buckley, Stonehouse's 28-year-old secretary and secret girlfriend, kept insisting to friends that he was dead, but she knew the real story: some of her clothes had been packed in a trunk and shipped to Australia a month before, she had transatlantic telephone calls from him, and she had also sent him semi-coded letters through one of his two Australian banks. It was having those two bank accounts in different names, Markham and Mildoon, that eventually put Melbourne police on his trail. At the time, they were on the lookout for the infamous missing peer Lord Lucan, who coincidentally vanished on 8 November after murdering his children's nanny. Initially, the police thought that the debonair Englishman spotted signing dodgy cheques might be him.

While Lucan's disappearance has continued to mystify police for 50 years, the Stonehouse mystery lasted just over a month. On Christmas Eve, Stonehouse had to confess his true identity. Later, at Melbourne police headquarters, he asked whether he could phone his wife in the UK. Although he didn't realise it then, the telephone conversation in which he made his bombshell revelation to her was taped.

He said: "Hello darling. Well, they picked up the false identity here. You would realise from all this that I have been deceiving you. I'm sorry about that, but in a sense I'm glad it's all over." For a few days Stonehouse was kept in a detention centre before being joined in Australia by his family, and later by his girlfriend.

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A month after his reappearance, he sat down for an interview with the BBC's Australia correspondent, Bob Friend. He blamed his actions on having developed a "divided personality, with the new personality providing a release to the old personality, which was under stress and strain of considerable proportions". Asked how he could put his wife and family through such anguish, he said: "I was trying – by disappearing – to make their lives easier… by taking away some of the tensions that I gave to them from my old personality."

Stonehouse was still an MP, but rejected any suggestion that he should give up his parliamentary salary while 12,000 miles away from his constituency. He said: "Lots of Members of Parliament go on overseas visits and do fact-finding tours. I've been doing a fact-finding tour not only in terms of geography, but in terms of the inner self of a political animal. Now that tour could be very interesting and, my golly, I think it fully justifies an MP's salary if I can get the story down of my experience." He added: "I think a Member of Parliament, like anybody else in any other job, is entitled to some consideration during a period when he has some sort of illness."

You only die twice

For seven months, Stonehouse tried to stay in Australia, but he was eventually deported and escorted back home by Scotland Yard detectives. In August 1976, after a marathon 68-day trial on charges relating to his failed businesses, he was jailed for seven years for theft, fraud and deception offences. He left prison three years later while recovering from open heart surgery, having suffered three cardiac arrests during his time inside.

His wife divorced him in 1978, and three years later he married Buckley, his former secretary. He died for a second time in 1988 – and this time it was for real. The 62-year-old had collapsed three weeks earlier, just before he was due to appear on a television show about missing people.

But what of those espionage claims that so damaged his political career? In his BBC interview after he reappeared, he dismissed as "ludicrous" the idea that he had been a spy for Czechoslovakia. To this day, his daughter Julia rejects any claims that he passed information to foreign powers, and in 2021 she wrote a book in his defence. Cambridge historian Prof Christopher Andrew is one of the few people who have seen MI5's file on Stonehouse; in his 2009 authorised history of the British intelligence service, he concluded that Stonehouse had indeed spied for the Czechoslovaks.

Speaking in 2012, Prof Andrew told the BBC: "The really decisive evidence came in the mid-1990s when the Czechoslovak intelligence service, having become an ally, made public some of Stonehouse's file. They were pretty disappointed with the quality of the intelligence he passed on as a minister, so to the long list of people who John Stonehouse defrauded, it is just possible that we can add the name of Czechoslovak intelligence."

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Ten key items in our wardrobe is enough – here's why

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241114-why-ten-key-items-in-our-wardrobe-is-enough, today

The dopamine-spiking effects of ultra-fast fashion are far outweighed by the wellbeing rewards of a capsule wardrobe, according to these less-is-more experts.

In his 1994 book Weniger, Aber Besser, the German industrial designer Dieter Rams famously wrote that "good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects". He was referring to the principles of product design, but this theory can just as easily be applied to our wardrobes – especially given that in the decades since Rams' proclamation, there has been an alarming acceleration in the amount of clothes we buy, and a correlating decline in quality and durability. Every year, somewhere between 80 billion and 150 billion new items of clothing are produced globally, while individually we now purchase five times as many clothes as we did in the 1980s, often wearing items some seven to 10 times before discarding them (a 36% decrease from 15 years ago).

This is largely down to the proliferation of cleverly targeted online advertisements, an ever-shifting trend cycle propelled by social media, and the burgeoning ultra-fast-fashion market  which encourages buyers to purchase more for less, and reap the short-lived, dopamine-spiking rewards. That said, there's no denying that clothes have the power to make us feel good.

"A lot of fashion is about newness," Tiffanie Darke, a fashion writer and sustainability strategist, tells the BBC. "We as creatures are always trying to move forward and renew ourselves – whether that's a new season, a new year's resolution or a new job. We want to progress ourselves personally, and clothes form a really important part of that." And Darke, who is also interim CEO of Smartworks – a charity that provides advice and donated clothing to women for employment interviews – has found that this can still be achieved with a "less is more" mentality. It is an approach that not only benefits the planet but also – according to a review by The Journal of Positive Psychology titled Minimalism, Voluntary Simplicity and Wellbeing – our own mental health. In November 2022, a report published by The Hot or Cool Institute revealed that in order for the fashion industry to meet the global target of limiting warming to 1.5C by 2030, British consumers must commit to buying no more than five new items of clothing a year.

Shocked by this statistic, Darke set up the now-viral Rule of Five campaign, inviting others to join her on her mission to buy just five new pieces annually (excluding socks and underwear), as well as four second-hand purchases. "Interestingly, even though I launched the campaign for climate reasons, by far the most overwhelming response from the people who opted to join me was that they were really sick of buying so much. People feel like their shopping has spun out of control: they're being manipulated to buy more and more, which ultimately leaves you feeling empty and bereft."

In September of this year, Darke published What To Wear and Why, a book that offers stomach-churning insight into the damage that shopping addiction is wreaking on the planet, as well as how to compile a mindful, perennially stylish collection of clothes that will free you from the binds of fashion consumerism for good – all gleaned from her own experiences while adhering to the Rule of Five.

The first step, she says, is establishing a capsule wardrobe – a curation of foundational pieces that are not only functional and designed to last but also fit you impeccably and ensure you feel your best. A proponent of what she calls the 80/20 rule (wherein 80% of your wardrobe is made up of "useful, basic classics" and the other 20% more expressive "personality pieces"), Darke's wardrobe revolves around 10 key items, ranging from a white cotton shirt and a smart jacket to a pair of comfy trousers and a playful knit.

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"My capsule wardrobe has been a really useful guideline," she says. "Of course, it's different for everybody depending on your circumstances, your work, what climate you live in… but they say you're only actually wearing 10 or 20 items on a loop at any given time, according to the time of year. So a good starting point is to look at the things you wear all the time, which are usually super functional, and you'll soon figure out your own list." Most of her ten new purchases over the past two years have been capsule items, she explains, as well as a pair of decidedly non-sensible gold trousers and a "totally see-through" black crochet skirt.

'The wardrobe edit'

Another helpful handbook when it comes to conscientious shopping is How to Wear Everything, the new publication from Kay Barron, the fashion director of Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter. Featuring contributions from some of fashion's biggest names including Sarah Jessica Parker (talking shoes, no less), stylist Law Roach (responsible for Zendaya's most iconic outfits) and Jodie Turner Smith (a doyenne of colourful dressing), the book guides readers through the process of creating the perfect wardrobe, from the frequently dreaded task of finding the right jeans to understanding your personal style, plus tips on second-hand shopping, dressing for special occasions and more.

For Barron, the best place to start is by performing what she has dubbed "the wardrobe edit" – a task she says must be undertaken "in a good mood, with lots of time and patience". "You pull everything out of your wardrobe and try it on," she tells the BBC. "Then, once you've put together outfits made up of the things you like wearing, you can see what's missing." She suggests making a list of these "missing" items on your phone, and using this to inform your future purchases. Indeed, one of Barron's top tips is forward-planning: "If you can afford to, it's better to buy something you love in that moment rather than shopping in a panic when you have a deadline like a holiday or a wedding. That's like shopping for food when you're hungover and hungry; it ends in really bad decisions and spending way more money!"

The wardrobe edit has more than one purpose: it also allows you to "shop" among your existing purchases. "When you rediscover something amazing that you already own, it's the best feeling in the world," Barron enthuses, adding that because trend cycles circle around so fast, it's a good idea to hold on to things like denim "because low-slung boyfriend jeans and skinny jeans inevitably come back into fashion".

Darke also looks to her pre-existing wardrobe for fresh ideas. "You only wear 30% of what you own, and even now I'm only wearing 50 or 60% of that," she says. "The Rule of Five inspires you to become much more creative and resourceful. You suddenly realise there are old dresses you haven't worn for ages that you could turn into something else." She notes, too, the new friendships she's forged since beginning the campaign, from the seamstress who helps her with alterations to the team at Save Your Wardrobe who assist with everything from mending moth holes to giving old pieces new life.

Rental businesses like By Rotation and My Wardrobe HQ are also an option that both experts advocate for, not only for one-off events but also as a means of experimenting. "On social media, we're inundated with different people's styles – it's new, new, new all the time, and it's so easy to drown in it, to question what your own style is," says Barron. "Rental is a great, non-committal way to try something." She also recommends starting small as a way of having fun and testing the waters for a new look, citing her new pair of "Kermit the Frog" heels in a lime green she says she "would never wear next to my skin or face".

Barron and Darke aren't the only industry stalwarts currently campaigning for meaningful change without sacrificing the joy that clothing can spark. This year, the designer and Great British Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant released Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish, a book exploring the rise of mass consumerism and the ways in which "having fewer, better things can make us happier". And The Enoughness, an engaging new podcast by fashion editor Melanie Rickey, sees guests describe what "just right" (a reference to the Goldilocks Principle) looks like for them, and how achieving that balance has improved their lives.

Rickey's interviewees have so far included chef Yotam Ottelenghi, expounding upon his tiny kitchen arsenal, and sustainable fashion pioneers Aja Barber and Brett Staniland, who reveal their own methodologies when it comes to embracing a less-is-more wardrobe. "The show's aim is to gradually shift our mindset to buying less, but better, [and to experience that] as an exciting pursuit, a game with only positive consequences," Rickey tells the BBC. "Stopping the endless wanting has an incredibly positive effect on every other aspect of life." The main upshot, she notes, is that you make better decisions and feel better about making them. "Doing esteemable things builds self-esteem," she says, "and less stuff makes room for more money, more time for experiencing life, and more playtime with what you already have."

Darke wholeheartedly agrees. "You can't sell anything on the fact that it's sustainable alone – we live in a society where nobody wants to live with less. It's about looking at what you'll gain from this approach, aside from its positive impact on the planet. And what I would say is that a) you'll save a ton of money and b) it's a really interesting exercise in self-knowledge. Being limited with your options forces you to think about who you are as you move through the world, and what you want to look like as you do, and that is really empowering."

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'The film is more optimistic than people consider': Why the poignant Kes is Britain's greatest coming-of-age story

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241114-why-the-bleak-and-poignant-kes-is-britains-greatest-coming-of-age-story, today

First released in November 1969, Ken Loach's social-realist tale of a boy who adopts a kestrel still resonates and has become a timeless classic of British cinema.

When director Ken Loach and producer Tony Garnett first screened Kes for British film executives in the autumn of 1969, they were confident that they'd created something authentic and important.

Based on Barry Hines's 1968 novel A Kestrel For a Knave, and written by Loach, Hines and Garnett, Kes tells the story of Billy Casper (Dai Bradley), a South Yorkshire teenager from a dysfunctional family who struggles at school. He finds a new lease of life when he adopts and trains a recently hatched kestrel he names Kes.

But Loach and Garnett's excitement over the film was short-lived. When the screening finished, the executives told them that the accents were so heavy and Kes was such a regional story that it would premiere in the Yorkshire city of Doncaster and have only a limited run in UK cinemas. "There was this idea that it was a local film for local people," explains Prof David Forrest, who teaches Film and Television Studies at the University of Sheffield and recently wrote a BFI Film Classics book on Kes.

Loach and Garnett were adamant that the executives were wrong. They insisted that Kes was a film for everybody and that the "central image of Billy and the bird was poetic and had a universal relevance and appeal", Forrest tells the BBC. In order to make sure that the drama was given the release it deserved, Garnett turned to his friends in the national press for help. "He mounted a counter campaign," says Forrest. "The likes of The Guardian and The Times wrote that they were being stopped from watching the film. So, obviously, when you say to someone that something is banned, it makes it more attractive."

When Kes had a wider release at the end of March 1970, it quickly drew acclaim from critics. Writing in The Spectator, Penelope Houston called it a "genuine, resolute little film". Roger Ebert wrote that it was "one of the best, the warmest, the most moving films of recent years" when it finally reached US cinemas in 1973. It also became a word-of-mouth hit across the UK, and picked up two awards at the 1971 Baftas, with Colin Welland landing the best supporting actor gong for his portrayal of Mr Farthing, and Bradley being named the most promising newcomer to a leading film role. But Kes's impact goes way beyond the box office it generated and awards it won. 

"It's still relevant," Simon Golding, author of the 2006 book, Life After Kes, tells the BBC. "Even though the times have changed, it hasn't dated. It's a classic." 

'Universality in its messages'

Fifty-five years after Kes had its premiere in London on 14 November, 1969, the coming-of-age drama continues to be regarded as one of Britain's greatest films. In 2000, the British Film Institute ranked it seventh on their list of the top 10 British films ever made. Kes's influence can be seen in the sensitivity of Shane Meadow's work, the heart of Billy Elliot, the dry humour of The Full Monty, and Andrea Arnold’s rugged-yet-poetic exploration of working-class life. Director Krzysztof Kieslowski called it one of his favourite films, while Christopher Eccleston, Andrew Garfield, Samantha Morton and Daniel Day-Lewis have spoken about how it inspired them to become actors.

Forrest believes that Kes made such an impact and continues to resonate because people see themselves in the character of Billy. "There's a universality to the film and its messages. Whether it's struggling with family, at school, not fitting in, the pleasures of being a child, the looming reality of work and the uncertainty of the future," he says. Loach's directorial style makes the film feel so realistic and authentic that it gives the themes even more credibility. "They really try to collapse the boundaries between documentary and fiction so people can feel the political injustices, economic injustices and social injustices that weren't shown on TV," says Forrest.

To achieve this, Loach used many of the same artistic choices as the directors of the "kitchen sink" dramas of the late 1950s and 60s. He shot in real-world locations, such as St Helen's School in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and hired non-professional actors. In fact, Welland was the only working actor to be cast in the film, and even he had taught at a school in Leigh before being cast in the BBC series Z-Cars. At the same time, Loach shot Kes "from a distance", explains Golding, who says that the cast didn't get to see other people's scripts. "That allowed for a lot of improvisation and he allowed the actors to make mistakes and do their own thing." 

But while such kitchen sink dramas as Look Back in Anger (1959), Room at the Top (1959), and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) are about the frustrations, alienation and desire of their "angry young men" leading characters to escape, these characters are often their own worst enemies. They either stay in a job they despise, get into the wrong fight or sleep with the wrong woman, which then causes their life to head in a different trajectory or stall.

With Kes, though, Loach makes it clear that Billy's lack of future options isn't his own fault. Instead, Billy, and every other child like him, was being let down by the British education system. Between 1945 and 1970, 10 and 11-year-olds took an exam known as the 11-plus that decided the type of school they would attend. Those that failed the exam, and were sent to less aspirational schools, often ended up in manual labour jobs, including dangerous jobs in mining. Billy is one such child. Because he failed his 11-plus, he is destined for a life working in coal mines, and most of the teachers around him have no interest in discovering whether or not he has any other interests. In Life After Kes, Loach says that the film "should be dedicated to all the lads who had failed their 11-plus. There's a colossal waste of people and talent, often through schools where full potential is not brought out."

This was one of the reasons why Loach searched for a non-actor who had failed his 11-plus exam to play Billy. "That was the whole point of the film," says Golding. "He wanted to show that what the film was saying was true. There was this untapped talent in the kids that had failed their 11-plus exams." As they struggled to raise its £157,000 budget, Loach, Garnett and Hines were steadfast in their ambition to make the film because "they knew it was politically right", says Golding. "They knew the story was true." 

'Ultimately hopeful'

When Kes was released, the response from teachers proved just how right they were. "Good teachers loved it, bad teachers hated it," says Golding, with Forrest noting that the film is more broadly about how to "nurture people" rather than just being an attack on the education system. "Billy doesn't conform to any of the ideals of working-class masculinity," says Forrest. "He's crap at school. He's bullied. He's marginalised. But he's brilliant at lots of other things that aren't really represented or acknowledged by the curriculum and society." 

Rather than being weighed down by its intense themes of bullying and poverty, Kes manages to remain fun, funny and ultimately hopeful, despite some undeniably sad moments. Loach directs Billy's increasing connection with the kestrel in a soaring manner, mixing John Cameron's simple yet hopeful score with Chris Menges's bright, natural cinematography. The sequence in which a PE teacher pretends to be Bobby Charlton in a game of football against his pupils is etched in British film lore, thanks to the deluded excitement in Brian Glover's performance, and Loach's use of the theme from BBC Radio's Sports Report, which was known by millions as it has been heard every week on British radio since 1948. Meanwhile, Bradley tenderly shows Billy gaining confidence, especially when he's in front of the class detailing his relationship with Kes. And when Mr Farthing (Welland) goes the extra mile to connect with Billy, it hints that there is hope to be found amidst the bleakness. 

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Loach, Garnett and Hines's refusal to take the film into overly mawkish and sentimental territory only enhanced its reputation and impact. This approach can be seen most clearly in the final scenes. After failing to put on a winning bet for his elder brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher), Billy returns home to find that Jud has killed Kes and dumped the kestrel's body on top of a bin. Their mother (Lynne Perrie) scolds Jud lightly, insisting that he shouldn't have done it, but is more concerned that there is a dead bird in her kitchen.

In other films, it might be heavily implied that this was the start to Billy's life working with animals. Maybe Mr Farthing would help to get Billy a job in a zoo. Some even advised Loach to include such scenes. "That misses the whole point," says Golding. "This is not the end for Billy Casper. This is just the end of one chapter. Life is a series of events. He'll do something else." 

Instead, Kes simply ends with Billy burying the kestrel on the hillside overlooking the field where they'd flown together. "There is something very powerful about the way the film resists symbolism and the idea that it's not just about the bird meaning freedom," says Forrest. "It goes beyond that. We know that Billy has the capacity for patience, that he has the ability to nurture relationships with non-humans. I argue that the film is more optimistic than people consider." 

With social mobility in Britain still relatively limited, and opportunities for working-class people still at a premium, Forrest believes that finding hope in Kes is just as important today as it was when the film was released. "There's a sense of inequality that exists in Britain and its cities. Kes is still a really powerful resource – not just for telling us what life was like in the late 1960s, but for how we make a better world today."

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How everyday clothing is becoming more luxurious

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241113-creative-director-clare-waight-keller-talks-fashion, today

Influential designer and creative director Clare Waight Keller on her move from Givenchy to Uniqlo, "re-defining what luxury is today" – and how Seoul street style is predicting what we wear.

Last week, Clare Waight Keller flew from London to Tokyo, grabbed some fabric swatches, and decided what millions of people will wear in September 2025. "I don't have a time machine," says the 54-year-old designer, who is now the creative director of Uniqlo, the global fashion chain. "But at this point, I've fine-tuned my fashion sense to live in the future," she tells the BBC from her home in Cornwall. "It's my job to see what will happen before it does."

If that sounds far-fetched, consider Keller's track record as something of a fashion intuit. She began her career at Calvin Klein during its early 1990s, Kate Moss heyday, then joined Tom Ford's team at Gucci around the year 2000. As creative director of Chloé in 2011, Keller helped develop the pale blush colour – called "millennial pink" by fashion theorist Véronique Hyland – that first appeared in floaty chiffon dresses and their corresponding Chloé perfume boxes, defining the era's more muted take on "girly" style, one that included a wider and more nuanced spectrum of feminine power. In 2017, Keller decamped for Givenchy, where her long-sleeved wedding dress for Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex spawned thousands of imitations just days after debuting in 2018. Even today, six years later, the boat-necked silhouette is echoed everywhere, from luxury labels like the Row to high-street brands like Bebe.

"You can't underestimate the design of that dress on young women," says Chloe Lee, 25, founder of the consumer trends newsletter Selleb, which tracks what Gen Z consumers are buying. "We were all in high school or college when we saw it. For us, it is the idea of a princess bride, or at least the starting point for one."

Keller is proud of her work with each label, and admits she "constantly" searches for old designs on resale platforms like eBay and Vestiaire Collective. But in 2020, she knew it was time for another change.

"Post-Covid was a watershed moment for me in terms of, 'Right, what's the next 10 years of style going to look like? And how can I be part of the future of fashion?'" she says. "I don't think you can do that right now without redefining what luxury is today."

But Givenchy, Chloé and Gucci are not Uniqlo, a brand selling $49 (£38) trousers in 25 countries worldwide. Keller says that's the whole point: "Through resale platforms, anybody can get a hold of designer pieces for reasonable prices." She's right: At Uniqlo competitor JCrew, cashmere sweaters cost about $150 (£116). On resale platform TheRealReal, nearly new versions from Fendi, Jil Sander and Keller's old haunt, Chloé, cost the same. Keller says the price-flattening won't discourage shoppers at mid-priced stores, but it will force the labels to better prove their value.

"Expense isn't luxury. Quality, innovation, excitement – that's luxury," she says. "How can we use fabric technology to make clothing last longer, look better, and have more versatility on the body? That's luxury. I'm a yarn nerd," she grins. "I went to Uniqlo because they have the tools to build a better fashion system. The yarn, the fabric tech – it's incredibly sophisticated."

Uniqlo's sustainability claims have been a sore spot for environmental commentators who claim, correctly, that its synthetic fabrics won't biodegrade, and could leech microplastics into the soil if they end up in landfills. In response, the brand has added "repair studios" in global flagships to mend things like torn hems and also to "adopt" clean, unwanted clothing for charity redistribution.  

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Shoppers are buying into Uniqlo's vision, it seems, and the brand is growing. "How Uniqlo could become what Gap used to be" was the title of a Forbes article that explored how Uniqlo's parent company is expanding its North American store count.

"Their t-shirts have always been the best – their shape really holds up – but lately, the trousers have just been fantastic," says Laurel Pantin, a stylist for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and the founder of the popular Substack newsletter Earl Earl, which focuses on attainable fashion hacks. "You can tell there's a lot of intention behind the design."

In September, Uniqlo unveiled a new "wide leg straight jean" at Keller's direction. "The easiest way to know what pants you're going to wear next year is just to look at what the 18-year-old girls are wearing this year," says Keller. "You might not like it right away! It's a new silhouette… But soon, your eye will adjust." According to shoppers, "soon" is now: the jeans are sold out at Uniqlo. And next autumn, she predicts, will bring a load of fuzzy, furry coats – essentially, a hug you can buy and wear around town.

'Where's the newness?'

Keller's meticulously hand-sewn couture gowns may have been worn by Rihanna and Cate Blanchett, but the designer is not anti-tech. She says "it's inevitable" that she now uses artificial intelligence as part of her process. "You know those flocks of birds that suddenly swarm and move somewhere else? That's how AI frames trends. You see these tiny data points on how people are shopping, and then something shifts. All the dots move."

Keller sees each of those dots as a consumer purchase, and tracking its movement as a big part of her job. "We get these data sets telling us how people shop. Knowing that, how can we better design for them? I'm obsessed with that! But I have to tell you something important." She leans into her Zoom camera as if someone in her living room is listening in. "Once you have data, your information is already old. It's already happened… Where's the newness? How do people find new things? That's what I need to make sure I'm always tracking."

Keller says her twin daughters and son, all Gen Z, are vital to the search. "Without them, I don't know if I would have done my Reformation collection," a capsule line of 14 jewellery pieces like hammered silver cuffs and chunky link earrings. "My daughters are over the moon. These girls in their early 20s who have access to everything on their phones are still obsessed with this LA brand because they wandered around, got lost and walked into their store once… A machine can't tell you that'll happen."

Keller isn't just paying attention to her Gen Z children and their British friends. She's also been making pit stops to Seoul, South Korea in between work periods at Uniqlo's Tokyo headquarters. "There's a big café society happening over there," she says. "K-pop and K-beauty are driving this extremely fashion-forward moment for Korea, and that's driving the rest of the world, or you know, it will be."

Does that include major couture houses in Europe? "Absolutely," says Keller, who recommends taking a peek at Ader Error, the Seoul-based label run by an anonymous collective of Korean designers. "They're one of the coolest brands out in Seoul at the moment," she says, noting their slouchy kilts and denim bomber jackets as examples of South Korea's new youth style. "Give it five to 10 years and their fashion designers are going to be coming through to [European] design houses for sure."

Does Keller ever consider coming back through those same design houses, perhaps as creative director for an even bigger luxury house? She shrugs. "Time named me the most influential designer in the world in 2019," she says. "I thought, at the time, that it was the greatest honour I could have. I'm still so grateful, but you know what? Now I walk around outside in Paris or London or Japan, and I see three random guys wearing a coat I made for Uniqlo. They want to live their daily lives in this coat! That sense of achievement is really huge."

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'That was the greatest day of all our lives': The migrants who passed through Ellis Island

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241108-the-migrants-who-passed-through-ellis-island, today

Isabel Belarsky was one of the millions of people who were processed on Ellis Island before its immigration facility closed in 1954. In 2014, she told the BBC about reaching the gateway to the US from the Soviet Union in 1930.

On 12 November 1954, a Norwegian seaman Arne Petterson was questioned by immigration officials after overstaying his US shore leave. He risked being deported, but instead he was granted parole, and as he stepped on board a ferry in New York Harbor, he was snapped by a photographer. He was the last person to be processed on Ellis Island.

The same day, the island that had been millions of migrants' first glimpse of the US closed its immigration facilities for good. By the time Petterson left, Ellis Island was mostly being used as a detention centre for illegal entrants and suspected communists, but for more than 60 years for many people it was a stepping stone to a whole new life.

Situated at the mouth of the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, the island had been selected by President Benjamin Harrison as the site of a central immigration facility in 1890 when it became clear that the one in Manhattan was unable to cope with the influx of new arrivals. In the decades before Ellis Island opened, the patterns of immigration to the US had shifted. From the 1880s there was a sudden rise in people coming from southern and eastern Europe. Many of them were trying to escape poverty, political oppression or religious persecution in their home countries. But as President John F Kennedy wrote in his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, "There are probably as many reasons for coming to America as there were people who came."

 

In preparation, the island was enlarged, partly by using landfill hollowed out from New York's first subway tunnels, and a new dock and three-storey timber building were constructed. This building would need to be rebuilt just five years later when a fire burnt it to the ground, destroying all passenger records dating back to 1855.

On 1 January 1892, Ellis Island opened to receive immigrants. At its peak, during the early years of the 20th Century, thousands of people passed through its gates each day. Angel Island in San Francisco Bay had the same role on the west coast from 1910 to 1940. But according to the National Park Service, some 40% of Americans living today are descended from immigrants who came through Ellis Island. Many of the people who would help shape the identity of the US in the 20th Century, from film director Frank Capra (born in Italy) and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (born in Russia) to actress Claudette Colbert (born in France) and cosmetician Max Factor (born in Poland), were processed at the island as children.

Isabel Belarsky was one such child. In 1930 she made the arduous sea voyage to the US with her family from what was then the Soviet Union. "Oh boy, that was some journey. It was cold, we had nothing to wear. Everybody was freezing. Finally, we came through Ellis Island," she told the BBC in 2014.

So near and yet so far

The steamships on which immigrants such as the Belarskys journeyed were divided by money and class, with the majority of people being third class passengers crowded together, in often unsanitary conditions in steerage. Before a ship could enter New York Harbor, it first had to stop at a quarantine checkpoint off Staten Island. There doctors boarded the vessel looking for signs of sickness, such as smallpox and cholera. People with contagious diseases were banned from entering the US, as were polygamists, anarchists and convicted criminals, among others. The first restrictions on immigration had begun to be enacted by Congress in the 1870s. Many of these had an explicit racial prejudice, with laws that first targeted Chinese migrants and later excluded immigration from most Asian countries.

If the ship passed its health inspection, the first and second-class passengers would be interviewed and processed onboard. During Ellis Island's first few decades, immigrants to the US did not require passports, visas or any official government paperwork at all. Passports existed, but they were only universally adopted in 1920. Instead, when passengers first boarded a ship, they gave spoken answers to questions which were recorded in its manifest. These were then checked by US officials and, provided those wealthier passengers were sickness-free and had no legal issues, they were allowed to enter the US, bypassing Ellis Island entirely.

Everyone else was tagged with the ship's name and the page number where they appeared on the manifest. They were then put on a ferry to Ellis Island where their future would be decided. When they arrived at the island and entered the main building, women and children were separated into one line and men into the other. Then they climbed the steep winding staircase to the registry room on the second floor, carefully watched by doctors who were looking out for signs of wheezing, coughing or limping that suggested health problems.

When they reached the registry room, they faced a brief medical examination. This was a nerve-racking experience. Immigrant children were asked their names so the doctors could check that they were not deaf or dumb. Toddlers who were being carried were made to walk to prove that they could. "It was interesting but a little frightening, too, because we couldn't speak English," Belarsky told the BBC.

If the doctor suspected a health issue they would mark letters on that person's clothes in chalk: H for heart problems, X for mental illness, CT for trachoma – a highly contagious and much feared eye infection that can lead to blindness. The test for this was particularly uncomfortable: doctors would turn a person's eyelid inside out using their fingers or a buttonhook, an implement used for fastening small buttons. If a person got a chalk mark, they would be removed from the line and confined in what was called the "doctor's pen" for a more thorough examination.

If they then failed a medical inspection they would be detained or outright refused entry and sent back to where they had travelled from. In some cases, this could mean a family being broken up. Official statistics record that only around 2% were refused entry to the US, but that still means that nearly 125,000 people, who had endured the long and difficult journey to get there, were sent home within sight of Manhattan. 

Those who passed the medical exam proceeded to a legal screening. Inspectors would check their tags and quiz them, often with the help of an interpreter, about everything from their eye colour and who paid for their passage to whether they were literate and whether they had ever been held in a mental health institution. Most people were processed quickly and went through Ellis Island within a few hours. But if a migrant's answers didn't match the ones on the ship's manifest, or if the inspectors were suspicious about them for some reason, their name was marked with an X and they were detained.

The American dream

Around 20% of immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island ended up being temporarily detained there. This could happen for a variety of reasons. Women travelling alone or with children were often viewed as potential burdens to the state. Officials would frequently class them as Liable to Become a Public Charge (LPCs), detaining them until a male family member – because no women were allowed to leave Ellis Island with a man not related to them – could turn up and vouch for them. Unmarried women who were pregnant could be judged by inspectors as "immoral" and held. Stowaways who weren't on the manifest, migrant labourers suspected of being brought into the US to break union strikes, and anyone officials deemed to be politically suspect could be detained or refused entry.

Although Isabel Belarsky's father, Sidor, was a renowned opera singer who had been invited to come to the US, her family was still automatically detained at Ellis Island. This was because at the time the US did not maintain diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Detainees would sleep in triple-tiered bunk beds in dormitory rooms on the building's third floor, receiving three meals a day until their cases could be resolved. Sometimes this could mean an overnight stay, sometimes it could be weeks or months. "They gave us 10 minutes every so often to go outside. When we went out they counted us," said Belarsky. "And when we came back, they counted again. When we sat down, when we ate, they also counted."

If arrivals had been detained because they were ill, and they hadn't been refused entry, they would be held in hospital wards on the island. While most recovered, more than 3,500 immigrants died on Ellis Island in sight of New York and their dream of a better life. Some 350 babies were also born on the island, although this was no guarantee of citizenship for the child.

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Once an immigrant's health or legal issues were successfully concluded, they were registered and free to enter the US and start their new lives. Belarsky said: "For me it was very exciting when I was a youngster. And finally, somebody got us the papers to leave Ellis Island. It was a beautiful sight. Beautiful. That was the greatest day of all our lives." 

By the time the Belarsky family came through in 1930, the era of mass immigration to the US had already come to an end. Following World War One, the US Congress enacted sweeping laws based on race and nationality which restricted who could come into the country. The Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 were designed to cap annual immigration, imposing strict quotas that favoured people from northern and western European countries. 

As immigration decreased, Ellis Island's role began to change. During World War Two, some 7,000 German, Italian and Japanese nationals suspected of being enemy aliens were interred there. Later, US soldiers returning from the war were treated in its hospital. In the late 1940s, as the Cold War developed, suspected communists who were swept up in the paranoia of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare were incarcerated there while the US government reviewed the often secret evidence against them. But by the 1950s, the use of air travel and modern entry procedures at airports made Ellis Island increasingly obsolete. In 1954, after 62 years of operation, it finally closed down, but it is open again today as a museum that highlights the rich history of new arrivals to the US. 

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'It's rather different from selling an ordinary book': How Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned – and became a bestseller

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241031-how-lady-chatterleys-lover-was-banned-and-became-a-bestseller, today

The UK publication of DH Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, gripped the nation in 1960. In History looks at the highly publicised trial that led to its release – and the rush to see what all the fuss was about.

Until November 1960, British people were prevented from reading Lady Chatterley's Lover by a law that criminalised the publication of writing considered indecent and immoral. The British publishing house, Penguin Books, wanted to challenge the Obscene Publications Act by printing a complete, uncensored edition of DH Lawrence's book. The resulting trial symbolised social changes that had been bubbling under in the years since World War Two, and demonstrated the gulf between the public and those who saw themselves as the guardians of established morals.

Lady Chatterley's Lover had been published privately in Italy and France in the late 1920s, but was banned thereafter in several countries around the world including the US, Australia and Japan. In the years leading up to the trial, writers and publishers in Britain had become increasingly worried by the number of books being prosecuted for obscenity. In an attempt to allay these fears, the UK's Parliament introduced a new Obscene Publications Act in 1959 that promised "to provide for the protection of literature and to strengthen the law concerning pornography". This amendment provided a defence for anyone accused of publishing a "dirty book". It allowed them to argue that a piece of work should be published if it had literary merit, even if the average person found its material shocking.

Lady Chatterley's Lover was considered controversial as it depicted a passionate relationship between an upper-class woman, Lady Constance Chatterley, and a working-class man, Oliver Mellors. The novel includes swear words and explicit descriptions of sex, and it portrays female sexual pleasure. Lawrence said that he hoped to reclaim sex as something that was acceptable in literature. He wanted to "make the sex relations [in the novel] valid and precious, instead of shameful".

In 1960, Penguin was ready to test the Obscene Publications Act. They wrote to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) and warned that they would be publishing an original version of the book. In August that year, Reginald Manningham-Buller, the chief legal adviser to the Crown, read the first four chapters of the novel while travelling on a boat train to Southampton. He wrote to the DPP, approving legal proceedings against Penguin. "I hope you get a conviction," he said. Sir Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, was in Spain as events unfolded. His colleagues advised him to return home immediately.

The trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover was the first of its kind under the new Act, and the scene was set for a clash between the establishment and those with more liberal views. To support their case in favour of publishing the novel, Penguin summoned a host of expert witnesses including 35 prominent writers and politicians. Among the group was Richard Hoggart, an influential academic and author who was seen as a key witness. He argued that the novel was an essentially moral and "puritan" work, which merely included words that he had heard on a building site on his way to the court.

In opposition, Mervyn Griffith-Jones led the prosecution, which argued that the sex in the novel was gratuitous pornography. "When you have seen the book just ask yourselves, would you approve of your sons and daughters reading it?" Griffith-Jones asked the jury. "Would you leave it lying about your house? Is it a book you would even wish your wives and servants to read?" He also listed nearly 100 uses of swear words in its pages. Mr Justice Byrne, the judge who presided over the trial, pointed out that the low price of the book meant it would "be available for all and sundry to read". These statements are often cited as representing the out-of-touch attitudes of the British establishment at the time. On 2 November 1960, after a six-day trial, the jury took three hours to deliberate and came to a unanimous decision. Penguin Books was found "not guilty" under the Act.

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Lady Chatterley's Lover went on sale immediately afterwards, as Penguin had prepared to distribute it in the event of acquittal. They had to work with a new printing firm as their usual one refused to touch it. But the trial had the effect of promoting the book, which sold out of all 200,000 copies on its first day of publication. It went on to sell three million copies in three months.

A few days after it went on sale, a shop owner in England, Mr Donati, spoke to BBC News about the novel's immediate popularity. "We ordered 1,000 to start with," he said. "We had every hope of getting them, of course, but in the event, it was cut to half. We received 500 copies. We were open quite early, at five to nine, and I should imagine we've sold 50 or 60 [copies] already… I think we should have to wait at least three weeks [for another stock]."

Still, traditional English reserve hadn't vanished overnight. Many customers were too embarrassed to ask for the scandalous novel by name, one bookseller told the BBC. "Some of them just ask for Lady C, some of them just give you three and six [three shilling and sixpence]." As the reporter noted, "It's rather different from selling an ordinary book." But then, Lady Chatterley's Lover was no ordinary book. When published in full, it would become a symbol of freedom of expression, and a sign that Britain's cultural landscape was changing. The poet Philip Larkin captured its significance in his poem, Annus Mirabilis:

"Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(which was rather late for me) –

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles' first LP."

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'It was a much more interesting character': How Arnold Schwarzenegger became the bad guy in The Terminator

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241024-how-arnold-schwarzenegger-became-the-bad-guy-in-the-terminator, today

The Terminator was released 40 years ago, on 26 October 1984. James Cameron's science-fiction thriller turned its star into one of the biggest Hollywood action heroes of the 1980s and 1990s – and it was all because he chose to play the bad guy, as he told the BBC in 1985.

Arnold Schwarzenegger never did anything by halves. For his breakthrough role in The Terminator, he claimed to have spent hours blindfolded every day, practising how to take apart and reassemble futuristic weapons, "to really show that I'm an expert coming back from the year 2028 to our present time in Los Angeles".

It was this combination of honest toil and marketing pizzazz that would rocket Schwarzenegger's career to unprecedented heights. His deadpan charisma helped. Few actors could deliver a simple line like "I'll be back" and turn it into a career-defining catchphrase. But just as important was his willingness to put in the hours required to achieve his ambitions, and to be open about all that work. "You have to lock into a whole different kind of emotional obligation to play a machine," he told the BBC's Breakfast Time on a promotional trip to London in January 1985. "The way you walk is quite different. The way you handle your guns is different. The way your facial expressions are when you kill and all those kind of things, because you're not supposed to have any feelings."

Schwarzenegger's previous films had been moulded around his imposing physique. In his 1970 film debut Hercules in New York, the reigning Mr Universe was credited as Arnold Strong. With the success of 1982's Conan the Barbarian and the 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer, his long surname became a trusted brand for action fans. The sleek science-fiction of The Terminator was a big upgrade on sword-and-sorcery, and Schwarzenegger had a clear vision of how he wanted to present himself. "I was offered the part of playing the good guy, the hero," he said. "I then read through the script and I was more fascinated with the character of Terminator. It was a much more interesting character playing a robot – like in Westworld, Yul Brynner played somebody with no emotions and with no feelings and no pity for anything – and to play this kind of a character."

Schwarzenegger said he pitched the idea that he should play Terminator model T-800 to the film's director, James Cameron. "I thought it was a big step forward in my career," said Schwarzenegger, "because I played all along always the hero, like in the Conan movies, for instance. Also, it was a good part for me to play because it was really the first time acting in a film where I didn't really have to rely on physical development, like in the Conan films."

Once The Terminator was a box-office smash in the US, Schwarzenegger had his eye on the next phase of his career. "It has opened up a whole new thing for me, and of course the most important thing in acting is to be able to get roles in many different areas rather than just get typecast," he said.

For Schwarzenegger, it was all about seizing opportunities. He had come a long way since the writer and broadcaster Clive James memorably likened the shirtless bodybuilder's appearance to "a brown condom full of walnuts". On Fame in the Twentieth Century, James's 1993 BBC series about celebrity, he cast his eye over the former Mr Universe's journey towards becoming "the first fully self-constructed superstar". James observed: "For his big breakthrough film, he played himself – that is, an android; somebody someone had built. And somebody had built him – he had." According to the critic, Schwarzenegger's "brightest move of all was to let the media in on his secret". He said: "The tongue in his cheek was hard to see amongst all his other bulges, but the press loved the way he didn't hide the hustle. He made his career the story."

The bodybuilder nicknamed the Austrian Oak was always openly ambitious in a way that was perhaps more brashly American than European. Having created his multiple Mr Universe-winning body, he came to mainstream attention in the 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron. At that year's Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, he explained to the BBC that he was not a trained actor, but was using his body as "a vehicle to break into the films".

Marketing masterstrokes

"It's something that carries me through until I'm established in acting," he said. When asked if he believed his acting talent could equal his bodybuilding skill, he was in no doubt: "When I was 15 years old, I'd said I would be the best or the greatest bodybuilder of all times and I have done it. Now I'm just as confident as when I was 15 – I can say now I will be the best actor around." 

By the early 1990s, almost everything had gone according to plan. While he may not have been the best actor around, Schwarzenegger was unquestionably one of Hollywood's biggest stars. He had gone from Conan the Barbarian to big budget sci-fi epics such as Total Recall and Predator, via high-concept family-friendly comedies such as Twins. Every career move was a marketing masterstroke, reaching out to ever expanding demographics. In the first Terminator, he was a terrifying villain. By its sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he was the hero.

On the 1991 BBC documentary Naked Hollywood, he looked back at the obstacles he had overcome on his way to the top. "I made up a programme, went to a lot of acting classes, voice classes, accent removal classes, and on and on and on, and really laid out a plan on how to market myself – and then I met the most incredible resistance that you can imagine," he said.

While prospective agents mocked his Austrian surname and urged him to change it, Schwarzenegger had the last laugh. "Everyone was basically saying to me, you have very little chance in this profession simply because there is no one that we know who has come from Europe that has really gone through the roof, that has made it really huge in this business."

 

He said that having lived around half his life in Austria and the other half in the US, he identified as an Austrian-American: "I'm extremely happy that I came to the United States and became a citizen of this country, because this is really the country that represents a beautiful vision of great opportunities and endless possibilities, where a dream can come true – in my case, I'm the perfect example of that." 

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His Austrian birthplace meant he could never complete his American Dream bingo card by making it to the White House; even Arnie was no match for the US Constitution. In 2003, he weathered campaign allegations of groping and cheating – behaviour that he eventually acknowledged as "wrong" – to be elected governor of California in 2003. Inevitably, he was nicknamed the Governator.

That same drive and appetite for personal growth he exhibited on the Breakfast Time sofa in 1985 took him further than maybe even he ever imagined. "All you have to do is just take advantage of these opportunities and then learn in these areas," he said. "If it is acting, to go to acting school and to start from the bottom again – and this is exciting in life, to go into new areas and be hungry for new and better things."

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'A social commentary about what was really going on': How Easy Rider revolutionised Hollywood

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241010-how-easy-rider-revolutionised-hollywood, today

The cult classic's guerilla techniques and daring subject matter helped to kickstart a new era. Just before its release in 1969, the BBC interviewed its director, Dennis Hopper, discovering an actor as idiosyncratic as his film.

On 17 October 1969, Easy Rider burst on to cinema screens through a psychedelic haze. Infused with rock music, free love and drug-taking, this low-budget, freewheeling road movie vividly captured the counterculture spirit of the late 1960s, as well as the US's bubbling social tensions.

The film tells the story of two free-spirited bikers, moustachioed hippy Billy, played by its director, Dennis Hopper, and leather-clad Wyatt, played by its producer, Peter Fonda. Easy Rider starts with Billy and Wyatt smuggling cocaine out of Mexico to sell to a Los Angeles drug dealer, played by famed music producer Phil Spector (whose performance seems even more sinister in the light of his 2009 murder conviction). The pair, now flush with cash, then resolve to ride across the US to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.

As they embark on their odyssey through the sweeping American landscape to the strains of Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild, they encounter characters who embody some of the conflicting world views prevalent in the US at the time, from an alcoholic civil-rights lawyer (played by Jack Nicholson) to a corrupt sheriff, from a hippy commune to small-town bigots. The film-makers paint a portrait of a country in flux. The slogan on the posters was: "A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere..."

A month before Easy Rider's release in 1969, Hopper sat down with the BBC's Philip Jenkinson for the programme Line Up. Decked out in clothes similar to those of his character Billy, Hopper's interview was intriguing, erratic and, at times, as confusing as the cult movie he had just made.

He explained to the BBC that he had wanted "to basically make a movie about what was happening in America at that moment". The 1960s were a tumultuous period for the US, as the country went through rapid and momentous cultural shifts. The decade had already witnessed the civil rights movement's push for equality, growing anti-war protests as the Vietnam war escalated, and a series of shocking assassinations of political figures such as John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

The gap between generations seemed to be widening. Many baby boomers had embraced the new music and culture, experimenting with drugs and sex, and often outright rejecting the more traditional values and materialism of their parents. Hopper felt that there was nothing in the cinema that spoke directly to these young people. There was nothing that showed their hopes and fears, how they desired to live and how those aspirations had opened up deep divisions in American society. He told the BBC in 1969 that he hadn't seen any movies "that made a social commentary about what was going on".

"Yes, [the studios] make them about the [American] Civil War, they make them about slavery, or they make them about the Korean War, but, I mean, something that was really going on at that moment. Very few people go out and make a movie about that, especially in Hollywood."

A megalomaniac

Easy Rider was not just unorthodox in its choice of subject matter, but also in its wildly chaotic film-making. With a limited budget of just $400,000 (£305,620) from Columbia Pictures – which at times meant that Fonda had to pay the crew out of his own pocket  – the production adopted a DIY approach. Crucial to the film's narrative was the idea of the road as a symbol of freedom and possibility, so Hopper needed to capture shots of Billy and Wyatt as they cruised down the seemingly endless highway. This kind of filming would usually have been done by hiring a camera truck with a radio.  Instead, the film-makers bought a 1968 Chevy Impala convertible, with the aim of selling the car at the end of the film to recoup some money. Cinematographer László Kovács then stuck a camera on the back of it with plywood and sandbags, and sat in the back seat filming Fonda and Hopper as they rode their Harley-Davidson motorbikes on the open road, making hand signals to communicate what they should do. The production also saved money by filming in real locations, rather than building expensive studio sets, and by shooting scenes in natural light using handheld cameras, which added to Easy Rider's feeling of unfiltered authenticity.

But the film's production was far from plain sailing, not least because Hopper was a volatile character. He confessed to the BBC in 1969 that he had been blacklisted in Hollywood because of his tendency to fall out with directors. "I took direction when I respected the man," he said. "If I didn't respect the man, and most of the time I didn't, I didn't take direction." Now, for the first time, he was the director himself, and he ended up battling for control of every aspect of the film-making process. At one point, he had a physical fight with a camera operator who wouldn't hand over the footage he had shot. 

That would not be the only "heated disagreement" the director would have on set. Actor Rip Torn was initially hired to play Nicholson's role, but he left a few weeks into the shoot after a fight with Hopper. The actor would successfully sue Hopper in 1994 for defamation when the director claimed that Torn had pulled a knife on him during the fight – saying, in fact, that the reverse was true. In Jenkinson's interview, the director did concede he was "difficult to work with". Fonda put it more frankly when he spoke to the BBC's Will Gompertz in 2014: "Hopper was a bit of a megalomaniac." 

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But Hopper took his craft seriously and was committed to his vision. He told the BBC that he "had been trained in method acting" and "not to have preconceived ideas" about how a scene should play out. When he had worked with James Dean as a young actor on Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956), Dean had told him, "Don't act smoking a cigarette, just smoke it." Hopper took this advice to heart. To give realism and a loose spontaneity to this tale of the counterculture, he – along with Fonda and Nicholson – took liberal amounts of drugs and alcohol during the shooting of the movie. Scenes were directed in documentary style, with the – often stoned or high – actors improvising scenes and dialogue.

Nicholson told Time Magazine in 1970 that he "smoked about 155 joints" during the multiple takes of a scene in which the two bikers introduce his character, George, to marijuana. The real acting challenge for him proved to be remembering, after all those joints, to play George as if he was clear-headed at the start of the scene. "Keeping it all in mind stoned, and playing the scene straight, and then becoming stoned – it was fantastic," he said.

The film-makers took full advantage of the abandoning of the Hays Code in 1968. Hollywood's self-imposed guidelines had prohibited, among other things, profanity, nudity, realistic violence and drug use. When the Code was replaced by the MPAA rating system, Easy Rider made the most of this new freedom, and its frank portrayal of drug-taking without judgement helped it to become a cause célèbre upon its release. Hopper defended the drug-taking to the BBC, saying that "it would be unrealistic of these two boys in America not to smoke pot", and he claimed that their cocaine smuggling was no more immoral than other capitalist ways of making money. "Perhaps all of us are involved in criminal acts of one kind or another," he said.

And Easy Rider doesn't seek to present the bikers as heroes or even necessarily as good people, just as a reflection of America. "Well, I think they are as good as their leaders, don't you? I think people are as good as their leaders," said Hopper. The film, at times, portrays a deeply unsettling image of the US its protagonists live in. It makes clear the open hostility and brutal violence that individuals who are seen as outsiders can face.

A new era

But the way Billy and Wyatt dressed, their disillusionment with establishment values and their search for identity and purpose struck a chord with many young Americans.

So did Easy Rider's rock 'n' roll jukebox soundtrack, which managed to capture the restless spirit of the times. Songs by Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, The Band and others were originally just music the film-makers liked. They were only meant to act as placeholders while Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young worked on a proper score. But Easy Rider ended up being edited to the songs, meaning that a huge portion of the film's final budget then had to be spent on licensing to clear them for use.

Despite initially being released in only one New York cinema, Easy Rider resonated with American youth, quickly becoming a critical and commercial hit. Hopper won the First Film Award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, and Nicholson and Easy Rider's screenplay both received Oscar nominations. The movie would go on to gross more than $60 million (£45.8m) worldwide.

Hollywood was blindsided by the sudden popularity of a film made on a shoestring budget outside the studio system. Easy Rider's box-office success helped kickstart an era where studios gave young directors, such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, much more creative control and freedom to experiment. These directors would then go on to define US cinema in the 1970s.

Hopper himself seemed bemused by this newfound acceptance by a Hollywood that had previously rejected him. "It's like you are on an elastic band. You run so far away that they snap you right back into the middle, and suddenly you're in the middle surrounded by the establishment," he said.

But he remained cynical about his status. "They are patting you on the back and loving you and pulling you to their bosom. Until you are no longer useful to them, and then they toss you away again."

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'We almost didn't do it because it was too dirty': Doris Day and Rock Hudson on Pillow Talk, the risqué romcom

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241002-doris-day-and-rock-hudson-on-pillow-talk, today

Released in this week in 1959, Pillow Talk challenged Hollywood's conservative morality, cleverly navigating restrictions on how bedroom activities could be portrayed. In the 1980s its stars talked to the BBC about how the film mirrored the attitudes of a nation on the cusp of sexual revolution.

"It seemed risqué, but isn't it funny when you think what they're showing now?" 

Doris Day's playful observation in a rare 1989 BBC interview perfectly encapsulates a film that once pushed Hollywood's boundaries of acceptability. Released in 1959, Pillow Talk flirted with the themes of modern romance and desire in ways that now feel almost quaint, but were daring at a time when the movie business was bound by strict moral codes. It went on to have an impact on the romantic comedy genre as a whole, establishing tropes and archetypes that are still used today. 

Directed by Michael Gordon, Pillow Talk follows Jan Morrow (Doris Day), a successful interior decorator, who unwillingly shares a telephone line with a charming yet womanising composer, Brad Allen (Rock Hudson). While Jan attempts to use the line for business, Brad hogs it for some business of his own, crooning serenades to countless women. The demand for phone services had surged in the US following World War Two, and so companies supplied multiple people with shared telephone connections. While cost-effective, these "party lines" meant that privacy was often compromised. In Pillow Talk, the party line is a playful tool for romantic entanglement and sets up the characters' "meet-cute", just as emails, text messages and apps would in the decades to follow. Similarly, the film's use of mistaken identity, romantic deception and eventual reconciliation became foundational tropes for the genre. 

The film proved to be a turning point for both of its stars, transforming Doris Day from giddy girl-next-door to sophisticated sex symbol, and Rock Hudson from a dramatic leading man to a romcom regular. "Ah, I was crazy about that script," Day remembered. "And I loved the clothes, and I loved working with Rock for the first time. He and I were very good friends. We loved working together. We respected each other. And I think that came across." Pillow Talk earned Day her only Academy Award nomination, and was followed by two more romantic comedies that paired her with Hudson, Lover Come Back (1961) and Send Me No Flowers (1964).  

As clean as the film might seem when seen through modern eyes, it was considered quite racy in the safe, sanitised cinematic landscape of the 1950s. In a period when even subtle suggestions of sexuality were censored, it treated dating, seduction and pre-marital sex so casually that Hudson turned down the script three times because of how lewd it seemed. "We almost didn't do it because it was too dirty," he confessed on the BBC's Wogan chat show in 1984.  

"Were those the days you had to keep a foot on the floor?" Terry Wogan asked, the audience responding with laughter. The idea of such delicacy and censorship was already absurd just a few decades after Pillow Talk was released. 

Pushing the boundaries

Wogan was referring to the Hays Code: "A Code to Govern the Making of Talking, Synchronised and Silent Motion Pictures." The Hays Code, first shared in 1930 and implemented in 1934, was a set of strict moral guidelines governing Hollywood films. Named after the president of The Association of Motion Picture Producers at the time, William H Hays, the code promoted traditional values, and sought to censor content relating to sexuality, violence and anything else considered outside the boundaries of decency. While films could be released without a certificate of approval, it would heavily impact the number of cinemas willing to run them. Even cartoon flapper girl Betty Boop had her skirt lengthened, curls tamed and movements minimised to avoid any suggestion of immorality. 

To stay in line with the code, many portrayals from the time showed married couples sleeping in adjacent single beds, or had one spouse keep a foot on the floor at all times to avoid them being shown lying down together. In particular, the code stated, "The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy," and warned: "Certain places are so closely and thoroughly associated with sexual life or with sexual sin that their use must be carefully limited".

Pillow Talk came teasingly close to crossing these ideas of decency, pushing the boundaries of what could be shown on screen without actually breaking the code's rules. A split-screen effect was used to show both sides of a phone conversation, giving the risqué impression of Hudson and Day lying side-by-side. The effect both drove the plot and heightened the couple's sexual tension, all the while sidestepping censorship. 

 

As the 1950s drew to a close, the authority of the Hays Code had been significantly weakened by the success of non-approved films. However, it would be almost a decade from Pillow Talk's release before it was abandoned completely in favour of a four-letter rating system (G, M, R and X) by what was then known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Pillow Talk still needed to navigate a fine line, maintaining the appearance of traditional morality, while subtly acknowledging the views of a society on the cusp of a sexual revolution. 

By the end of the film, conventional values prevail, with Hudson's Brad ultimately reforming his womanising ways, falling in love and seeking a committed relationship. And yet, Pillow Talk still mirrors the evolving attitudes of the late 1950s. Day's portrayal of Jan as a professional woman not defined by her relationship status connected with audiences who were starting to embrace women's independence in a post-World War Two US. Jan is successful, confident and in control of her personal life – a departure from the more domesticated female roles seen in some earlier Hollywood films. 

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While Pillow Talk signalled a shift in cultural attitudes towards love and relationships, it also underscored the limitations of that progress. At the height of his career, Hudson kept his sexuality hidden, a necessity in an era that did not fully accept LGBTQ+ identities. "Nothing was ever talked about as far as his private life," Day explained in her 1989 television interview, "And I must tell you that many, many people would ask me, you know, 'Is Rock Hudson really gay?' And I said, 'It's something that I will not discuss.'" 

Hudson's sexuality remained shrouded in secrecy and rumour until his Aids diagnosis was made public in 1985. He was one of the first celebrities to be publicly diagnosed and to die from an Aids-related illness. The disclosure of his condition helped to change public perception of Aids, which at that time had not even been publicly acknowledged by then-US president Ronald Reagan. Day would go on to raise awareness and fundraise for Aids research throughout her life.

Hudson's euphemised "private life" within the constraints of a conservative society was an example of the broader tensions of the late 1950s, when some boundaries were being pushed while others remained firmly in place. Pillow Talk captures those tensions. A landmark in romantic comedy, it reflects a moment in Hollywood when traditional values and modern ideals coexisted, offering both a glimpse of the sanitised past and a nod to the changes ahead.

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'It is a kind of marriage': When Denmark held the first ever same-sex civil unions

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240926-when-denmark-held-the-first-ever-same-sex-civil-unions, today

Denmark became the world's first country to offer legal recognition of gay partnerships on 1 October 1989, and the BBC was there to film the ceremonies – recording a day when "something shifted in human affairs".

In 2024 it might seem unremarkable in many parts of the world, but in 1989 it was a plunge into the unknown. Denmark's parliament passed a law in May of that year that allowed gay people to enter registered partnerships. Five months later, 11 couples arrived suited and booted at Copenhagen's city hall to take part in a civil ceremony unlike any that had gone before. It wasn't quite the same step as marriage, but it was a giant leap for equality.

The very idea was so unusual at the time that the BBC's religion and ethics programme, Heart of the Matter, was on hand to film the proceedings. Joan Bakewell, the programme's presenter, summarised the debate: "What lies at the heart of the matter is if one country ceases to regard marriage as solely between one man and one woman, how does that affect the way the rest of us think of it? And if one country in Europe can pass such a law, wouldn't it eventually affect Britain?" It would take another 16 years for her second question to be answered. 

The ceremony itself was in many ways just like a regular wedding. The couples entered a small room and were asked by the mayor if they wanted to be in partnership with each other. The first couple to sign on the dotted line were Axel and Eigil Axgil, who had lived together for 41 years. The veteran gay rights campaigners had in the past endured discrimination and ill-treatment. In 1948, the men – using their original names Axel Lundahl-Madsen and Eigil Eskildsen – founded the Danish Gay and Lesbian Association. Legal recognition of their partnership had been a long time coming. Upon their civil union, they combined their names into a new surname, Axgil.

The second of 11 couples entering civil partnerships that day were Ivan Larsen, an ordained minister of the Lutheran church, and psychologist Ove Carlsen. Mr Larsen said he felt so happy that he could allow himself "to have the same feeling as everyone else who is going to be married". He told the BBC: "It's the first time in world history it has been made possible for gays and lesbians – not to be married, because we are not allowed to use the word 'marriage' – but we are allowed to have our partnership registered with the same rights, except for a few things that the heterosexuals have. It is a kind of marriage. It means that now we are recognised not only as singles, but also as couples. That is extraordinary."

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The civil partnerships differed in three significant ways from heterosexual marriage: at least one partner had to be a Danish citizen, couples were not allowed to adopt children and the union could not be registered in a church. As a priest, however, Mr Larsen saw their union as much the same as a traditional Christian marriage. "I think that when two people are in love with each other and they want to spend the rest of the life together, then it is a marriage blessed by God. Whether they are saying 'I do' in the church, at a town hall or in a private room, it's a Christian marriage, and God is blessing it."

The Aids crisis in the 1980s had made same-sex partnerships more of a pressing issue, according to Dorthe Jacobsen of the Danish Gay and Lesbian Association. She said that when her organisation came forward to offer help to the authorities in reaching out to gay men, "that really started the people in parliament talking to us". She added: "It meant they started to realise what kind of lives we had, and of course when you talk to people, they get to know you. They find out that you're not a pervert. They find out that you have a very similar life to them."

Leading the way 

For Theodor Jørgensen, a theology professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark had taken an important step in leading by example. "Some societies have to make the first step and to take the risk. All the homosexuals in all the countries over the world will come to their governments and say, 'Look what they have done in Denmark – we should try to do the same thing here, and what are your objections to it?'"

Northern European countries would lead the way in recognising same-sex unions. Norway, Sweden and Iceland all enacted similar legislation to Denmark in 1996, while Finland followed suit six years later. The Netherlands became the first country to offer full civil marriage rights to gay couples in 2001. The UK held its first civil partnership ceremonies in 2005. In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a legal right across the United States. To date, there are 36 countries where same-sex marriage is legal.

At the end of the 1989 documentary, Bakewell observed: "Something has shifted in human affairs. It began here in Denmark with a few couples on a sunny Sunday in October, where marriage and partnerships now live side-by-side. The rest of the world is watching." 

In 2012, Denmark went one step further and legalised gay marriage. To mark the occasion, Mr Larsen and Mr Carlsen held a blessing of their union in a church. Looking back in 2014 in an interview with the BBC's World Service, Mr Larsen said that Denmark's legalisation of same-sex partnerships had an enormous effect on normalising gay relationships. "In fact, I sometimes think it has been so normal that it isn't worth discussing," he laughed.

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James Bond theme tune guitarist Vic Flick dies

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39n2p4lplro, today

The musician best known for playing the guitar riff in the James Bond theme tune has died.

Vic Flick, who was the lead guitarist on the famous track, is said to have been paid £6 to rearrange and record Monty Norman’s theme tune for Dr No, the first James Bond film.

Flick’s son, Kevin, announced on social media that his father had died aged 87 after having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Born in Surrey in 1937, Flick worked with the likes of The Beatles, Tom Jones, the Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Cliff Richard throughout his career.

The famous theme song was recorded in 1962.

Flick played the riff on a 1939 English Clifford Essex Paragon Deluxe guitar plugged into a Fender Vibrolux amplifier.

The guitar was displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Ohio, United States.

Composer Monty Norman died in 2022 at the age of 94.

He said he knew the famous theme tune had captured the essence of 007 after switching the main riff from a sitar to an electric guitar.

"His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness - it's all there in a few notes," he said.

In 2013, Flick received a lifetime achievement award from the National Guitar Museum, who said he was “one of the world's great guitarists”.

“We have been proud of our association with him. He will be missed,” a spokesperson said.

Flick also performed on several other 007 soundtracks, including Shirley Bassey’s theme for the 1964 film Goldfinger.

He is survived by his wife Judith, his son Kevin, and one grandchild.

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Steps to take supermarket musical on tour

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clydpzk39zgo, today

A new musical set in a supermarket produced by 1990s pop band Steps and featuring many of their hits is set to be taken on tour of the UK and Ireland.

Here and Now has been showing in Birmingham, but Steps have now announced the production will visit cities including Manchester in summer 2025.

The band is one of the UK’s most successful pop groups of all time.

Members came into the BBC North West Tonight studio to share their announcement and told us why they are expecting a more raucous reception in the north of England.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk and via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.


Tulisa says she's demisexual - here's what it means

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp87py4yryro, today

I'm A Celeb's Tulisa Contostavlos has told her campmates she's demisexual and has abstained from sex for more than three years.

The N-Dubz singer and former X-Factor judge explained she needs "to have a really close emotional bond with someone" before she finds them sexually attractive.

"For me, it's all about the connection and the emotions that I feel with someone and then wanting to express them in that way," she said, speaking on Tuesday's episode of the ITV show.

Her description of herself as demisexual got a lot of viewers wondering what the term "demisexual" means.

It's a word used to describe people who only develop a sexual attraction to others after forming a deep bond based on their personality, rather than feeling an instant connection.

They may not fancy someone based on things like the way they look, smell or sound.

Tulisa told her campmates she's "not an overly sexualised person".

"I need actual depth... I'm a slow, slow burner," she said.

The 36-year-old from London said she had a profile on exclusive dating app Raya but the thought of dating "genuinely makes me feel physically sick".

Tulisa first shot to fame as part of N-Dubz in the 2000s before going solo with tracks including Young and Sight of You.

After she entered the Australian jungle on Sunday, broadcaster Rylan Clark, who met Tulisa when she was a judge on X-Factor, urged viewers not to comment on her appearance.

Speaking to podcaster and former Love Islander Olivia Atwood, Tulisa discussed having surgery and fillers after she was diagnosed with Bell's palsy.

Bell's palsy is a type of paralysis that temporarily affects the ability to control the facial muscles.

Tulisa told Olivia's So Wrong It's Right podcast the condition meant her "whole face dropped" so she started getting treatments to "balance out the symmetry" of her face.

She's in the Australian jungle alongside Coleen Rooney, content creator GK Barry and McFly's Danny Jones as well as Radio 1 DJs Melvin Odoom and Dean McCullough.

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Tickets on sale for music festival in abbey ruins

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30p262p44no, today

Tickets have officially gone on sale for an annual music festival held in the grounds of historic abbey ruins.

The Glastonbury Extravaganza in Somerset launched in 1996, and is one of three events organised by Michael Eavis and the Glastonbury Festival each year.

Held at Glastonbury Abbey ruins "as a thank you to the town", the event returns on 9 August 2025 between 16:30 and 22:00 BST.

Pop rock band The Script is set to headline the concert, alongside several other special guests yet to be announced. The event will conclude with a fireworks finale.

The festival originally started out as a classical music concert but eventually moved towards a more eclectic mix of classical, pop and rock music.

It boasts previous headline acts such as Tom Odell, Van Morrison, Status Quo, Paolo Nutini and Paloma Faith.

Overnight camping sessions will also be available in the campsite at the foot of the Glastonbury Tor via shuttle bus.

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Ed Sheeran surprises pupils at music careers event

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn01pxwy161o, today

Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran made a surprise appearance at a music industry careers event for schoolchildren.

More than 200 high school students from Ipswich attended the event - which showcased careers opportunities - at The Baths venue on Tuesday.

It was hosted by Ipswich education and music provider, Brighten The Corners.

Audiences were entertained by performances from three of Suffolk’s up-and-coming artists before a surprise appearance by Sheeran.

Rapper Ryski, rock band AfterDrive and indie-pop sibling duo Esme Emerson performed and answered questions from the audience.

Esme Emerson, who started their career at Rock Schools run by the Brighten The Corners team and who recently supported Keane on tour, said: "It was such a joy to be part of this event.

"It’s so important that young people have access to music and the arts. Also, we love Ed."

Brighten The Corners said students had a chance to learn about roles in the music and live events industries, including sound engineering, management and marketing.

Chief executive Joe Bailey said: "We work within one of the most creative and dynamic industries in the UK and hope this event will be the catalyst for future careers."

Starting out in his own musical career, 33-year-old Sheeran, who lives in nearby Framlingham, would often busk in Ipswich and played at local pubs, often to tiny audiences.

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'Manifest': Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c774mzyrp84o, today

The Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year has been revealed as "manifest", after a global wellness trend endorsed by celebrities including singer Dua Lipa.

The traditional definition included the adjective "easily noticed or obvious" and the noun "to show something clearly through signs or actions".

It now includes “to manifest" in the sense of "to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief doing so will make it more likely to happen".

But social psychology professor Dr Sander van der Linden, from the University of Cambridge, warned that "'manifesting' wealth, love, and power has no scientific basis and can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment".

Other celebrities who spoke of "manifesting" their success in 2024 included  US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and England striker Ollie Watkins.

Wendalyn Nichols, publishing manager of the Cambridge Dictionary, said: "Manifest won this year because it increased notably in look-ups, its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time."

'Magical thinking'

She said there were three considerations before announcing the Word of the Year: "What word was looked up the most, or spiked? Which one really captures what was happening in that year? And what is interesting about this word from a language point of view?"

Dr van der Linden added: "Manifesting is what psychologists call ‘magical thinking’ or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us."

He said the idea gained "billions of views" on TikTok during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There is good research on the value of positive thinking, self-affirmation, and goal-setting," he said.

"Believing in yourself, bringing a positive attitude, setting realistic goals, and putting in the effort pays off because people are enacting change in the real world.

"However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking and moving reality with your mind – the former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.”

Demure, brat and Goldilocks

* Brat - A child, especially one who behaves badly. The word went viral thanks to pop artist Charli XCX's album of the same name, about non-conformist women

* Demure - Quiet or well-behaved. Influencer Jools Lebron's satirical use of the word on TikTok mocking stereotypical femininity drove look-ups

* Goldilocks - To describe a situation that is exactly right. Financial reporters characterised India’s strong growth and moderate inflation as a Goldilocks economy in early 2024.

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Diddy faces more than two dozen lawsuits as he sits in jail

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kjxd3m528o, today

Hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs is currently in federal custody awaiting trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.

His arrest in New York came amid a series of civil suits alleging sexual assault and physical violence, some going back to the 1990s.

More than two dozen people have filed lawsuits against the rapper, accusing him of using his influence in the entertainment industry to do everything from drugging, assaulting and raping people.

The latest batch of lawsuits include allegations from two men who were underage at the time of the alleged sexual assaults. Both described being hopeful that Mr Combs could help jumpstart their careers in the entertainment industry.

The Harlem-born rapper has denied all the allegations, both those laid out in lawsuits and in his federal indictment.

What is the criminal case about?

Mr Combs, 54, was arrested on Monday 16 September in a New York hotel on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force and transportation for purposes of prostitution.

Federal prosecutors have accused him of "creating a criminal enterprise" in which he "abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfil his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct".

They said Mr Combs had used drugs, violence and the power of his status to "lure female victims" into extended sex acts called "Freak Offs".

They also revealed they had uncovered firearms, ammunition and more than 1,000 bottles of lubricant during raids on Mr Combs' homes in Miami and Los Angeles in March.

Prosecutors have reportedly been in touch with several witnesses who worked under Mr Combs and some of the accusers currently suing him, and have left open the possibility of more charges.

The singer-producer has pleaded not guilty to the three felony counts against him and his attorney told reporters he was a "fighter" who was "not afraid of the charges".

Mr Combs is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a federal jail notorious for its violence and poor inmate care.

MDC includes an extra-security section with barracks-style housing reserved for special detainees, and US media report that Mr Combs is sharing the space with convicted cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

His legal team sought his release pending trial because of the jail's "horrific" conditions, but prosecutors argued he posed "a serious flight risk" and Mr Combs has twice been denied bail.

If convicted, he faces a sentence of anywhere from 15 years to life in prison.

Who are his accusers?

Mr Combs' former on-and-off girlfriend, Casandra "Cassie" Ventura, was first to blow the whistle on the self-proclaimed "bad boy for life".

In a lawsuit filed last November, the model and musician alleged he had "trapped" her for over a decade in a "cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking".

Mr Combs "vehemently" denied the claims. A day after the suit landed in court, both parties said they had "amicably" settled the case, though Mr Combs' attorney said the settlement was "in no way an admission of wrongdoing".

But in May, CNN obtained surveillance footage that showed the entertainer-turned-entrepreneur assaulting Ms Ventura in a 2016 altercation that is detailed in her suit.

Mr Combs finally acknowledged the incident in an Instagram video two days later, saying he was "disgusted" by what he had done.

“My behaviour on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions," he said.

At least 27 others - including several men - have since come forward with their own claims. Here are details from some of the cases - many have included plaintiffs who filed anonymously.

Joi Dickerson-Neal, who said Ms Ventura had inspired her to speak out, alleged Mr Combs had "intentionally drugged" and raped her when she was a Syracuse University student in 1991, and had made her a victim of revenge porn by filming the assault and showing it to others.

Representatives for Mr Combs blasted the lawsuit as "purely a money grab" and have asked for it to be dismissed.

Liza Gardner accused Mr Combs and R&B crooner Aaron Hall of plying her with drinks and then forcing her to have sex with them against her will when she was 16 years old. She also claimed that Mr Combs had visited her home the next day and choked her until she passed out. Mr Combs' attorney slammed the claims as "bogus".

The three initial lawsuits were brought under New York state's Adult Survivors Act, which granted adult victims a one-year window to bring claims against their abusers regardless of statutes of limitation.

A woman so far identified only as Jane Doe claimed that Mr Combs, former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre and a third person had violently gang-raped her in a New York City studio when she was a 17-year-old high school student.

A few days later, Mr Combs broke his silence on social media against "sickening allegations... by individuals looking for a quick pay day". His attorneys are seeking to dismiss the "baseless and time-barred" case. Mr Pierre has meanwhile called the suit a "tale of fiction".

Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones, a producer and videographer who worked on Mr Combs' most recent album, accused the mogul of running an illegal racketeering enterprise in which he was forced to procure drugs, solicit sex workers and tape sex acts. He also claimed Mr Combs and actor Cuba Gooding Jr had groped him without consent.

Grace O'Marcaigh, who worked on a yacht leased by the Combs family in 2022, accused the rapper and his son, Christian "King" Combs, of sexual assault. She blamed them for creating an “environment of debauchery” with suspected sex workers and top celebrities aboard.

Crystal McKinney claimed she had been drugged and sexually assaulted by Mr Combs following a Men’s Fashion Week event in 2003 when she was 22 years old. She also said he had subsequently "blackballed" her in the modelling world.

April Lampros, who says she met Mr Combs as a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 1994, detailed "four terrifying sexual encounters" through the early 2000s.

Adria English, a former adult-film actress who worked with Mr Combs in the 2000s, said he had used her as a "sexual pawn for the pleasure and financial benefit of others” during the “White Parties” he hosted at his homes in New York and Miami.

Dawn Richards, who once sang in two Combs-assembled groups including Danity Kane, said she had personally witnessed his violence against Ms Ventura and that he had threatened her life when she tried to intervene.

Thalia Graves, who is backed by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, claimed Mr Combs and his bodyguard Joseph Sherman had sedated, overpowered and tied her up before recording themselves raping her and later distributing the sex tape.

Six anonymous accusers: Six lawsuits were filed on 14 October by four men and two women. One of the women accused Mr Combs of raping her at a hotel and another suit accused the rapper of ordering a 16-year-old boy to undress when the teen was talking to him about breaking into the music industry.

Ashley Parham filed a lawsuit on 15 October claiming that Mr Combs had raped her as "payback" for a comment she made suggesting that he was responsible for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. Shakur's murder has never been solved, but a man currently on trial for his murder has previously claimed that Mr Combs had paid for him to be killed.

Mr Combs' legal team has dismissed the flurry of lawsuits as "clear attempts to garner publicity."

"Mr Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defences, and the integrity of the judicial process," his attorneys said in a statement, adding: "Mr Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone - adult or minor, man or woman.”

Nine more lawsuits were filed anonymously between 20 October and 28 of October. Many of the lawsuits were filed by adults who said they were underage at the time of the alleged sexual assaults.

Two male accusers said in lawsuits that they were sexually assaulted while meeting with the mogul about their careers in the music industry while they were minors.

Several of the lawsuits included details that the incidents happened at some of Mr Combs' notorious parties.

Five more anonymous lawsuits were filed against Mr Combs on 19 November from three men and two women. The suits centre on allegations of sexual assault at parties with at least two of them outlining rape accusations against Mr Combs.


These five bizarre Surrealist artworks are not what they seem

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20241106-these-five-bizarre-surrealist-artworks-are-not-what-they-seem, today

Dismissed or trivialised by some as unserious and silly, Surrealist art was in fact largely born out of the brutal trauma of living under fascism, as these five striking works reveal.

It's a century since André Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism advocated a "mode of pure expression… dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason". Writing was the intended vehicle for this unbridled imagination; art was thought too unspontaneous. Yet, just a year later, on 13 November 1925, the first exhibition of Surrealist art was staged in Paris, unleashing a world of peculiar, dream-infused works by artists such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Max Ernst.

Given Surrealist art's fantastic forms – from Salvador Dalí's melting pocket watches and lobster telephone to Méret Oppenheim's furry cup and saucer – it's easy to dismiss or trivialise these outlandish works as more silly than serious. However, as galleries mark the Manifesto's centenary with exhibitions on Surrealism and its legacy, the movement's poignant response to the war years that spawned it is being brought to the fore.

The exhibition But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism, at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, aims "to show that the movement of Surrealism formed at the same time as those fascist movements in Europe, and thus it is highly impactful and even constitutive, in many ways, of the political self-understanding of Surrealism", co-curator Stephanie Weber tells the BBC. The Surrealists – with the exception of Dalí – were anti-fascist, often with close ties to the French Communist Party. "All the artists in our exhibition were personally impacted by fascism," and "fought back", says Weber. "Many of them were persecuted, they had to go into exile, they fought in the Resistance… and many of them either fell in war or were deported and killed."

One of the featured artists is Romanian Jewish painter Victor Brauner. Faced with rising antisemitism, fanned by Romania's Iron Guard, he made a new life in Paris in the 1930s, only to be displaced again in 1940 by the Nazi occupation. His oeuvre was nevertheless prolific, and conveys, says Weber, "this pictorial sense of humour" seen in Totem of Wounded Subjectivity II (1948), the exhibition's flagship image. The oil painting features comical, cartoonish beings with arms for a nose or chin, but whose sharp teeth and spikes suggest menace. They clutch forms that evoke both fruit – a classic surrealist motif – and internal organs, hinting at something visceral and brutal. In the centre is the ubiquitous surrealist "egg", a symbol of the ambition for a new reality, driven by the imagination and distinct from the suffering of the past.

In Paris, where Breton's Manifesto was penned, visitors to the Pompidou Centre's blockbuster exhibition Surrealism can now discover the original manuscript showcased at the heart of a labyrinthine journey through 40 years of mind-boggling art. The travelling exhibition began in Brussels, and will continue to Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia, but is currently at its most expansive, occupying a 2200-sq-m space. Highlights include René Magritte's vertiginous Personal Values (1952), an absurd and amusing rendition of a seemingly small room containing vastly oversized everyday objects. This comedy, however, has suffering as its source. Disillusioned by the rational thinking that led to the mass destruction of world war, artists such as Magritte and his Dadaist predecessors embraced the illogical, creating disconcerting works inspired by the subconscious world of dreams.

Something monstrous

Though revolutionary in its vision, Breton's manifesto was less progressive in its inherent sexism. Addressed to men, and written entirely from the perspective of the male experience, it fails to anticipate or acknowledge the crucial role women would play in shaping Surrealism. The Pompidou Centre pays homage to female artists such as Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning and the photographer Dora Maar, frequently underestimated or dismissed as muses. The exhibition's lineup includes Maar's celebrated Hand-Shell (1934), an arresting image comprising two contrasting and incongruous objects: an elegant hand with a lone finger teasingly poking the sand, and the shell it emerges from – a reimagining, perhaps, of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The work's dramatic shadows and skies and its interwar context invite a range of readings, from the rise of a new world from the ruins of the past, to the imminent visitation of something monstrous.

This prophetic quality to Surrealism, drawn from the unconscious, is addressed early on in the exhibition where Edith Rimmington's Museum, a "false collage" painting with a crystal ball-like centrepiece, commands attention. Tor Scott is researching this enigmatic British artist and is curatorial assistant at the National Galleries of Scotland, where a collection of Rimmington's works and ephemera is held.

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With its multiple roaming eyes, Museum "questions the balance of power between object and viewer", she tells the BBC, and "speaks to the objectification of the female form". The central feminine "artefact" is surrounded by floating sea creatures resembling disembodied female reproductive organs. Much of Rimmington's output harnessed "visceral and violent imagery that would have spoken to those living in Britain during and after the interwar period", says Scott. "Her work often included depictions of dismembered or mutated bodies and decaying flesh, as well as references to the cyclical nature of life and death."  

This undercurrent of horror continues at The Traumatic Surreal at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, which explores female surrealists' expression of the painful legacies of fascism. "Surrealism originates and is anchored in the trauma of war," says co-curator Professor Patricia Allmer, professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of the 2022 book, The Traumatic Surreal: Germanophone Women Artists and Surrealism after the Second World War, that inspired the exhibition. "No male surrealist artist engaged as directly in representing and critiquing the Second World War as these women artists did," she tells the BBC. Claude Cahun and her girlfriend Marcel Moore were incarcerated for publishing anti-Nazi propaganda, for example, and Lee Miller "really goes to war and photographs there. There's not a single male Surrealist who does that".

The focus of the exhibition, however, is Germanophone artists. "Either they lived under fascism or their parents were, in one way or another, involved in it," says Allmer, stressing that the extreme patriarchal values that fascism embodied did not end with the war. "The whole ideology carried on but was kind of repressed and became this strange undercurrent."

One of the exhibition's most intriguing works is Squirrel by Méret Oppenheim, a German-born artist of Jewish heritage who fled with her family to Switzerland. Sculptures such as this fluffy-handled beer mug may seem humorous but are often "steeped in violence", says Allmer. "On first impression, you have this lovely soft, bushy tail and it invites you to stroke it, and you've got the beer glass which suggests social pleasure and hedonism," but the odd juxtaposition creates a shock effect "like a metaphor of the historical shocks of war experience that lead to trauma". Implicit in the severed tail, says Allmer, is "cutting or amputating", and its fur − a material also seen in the exhibition in the work of Ursula, Renate Bertlmann and Bady Minck – connotes something feral and frightening, the treatment of women as animals, and Hitler's unsettling obsession with wolves. Black humour is deliberate and "a really important strategy", explains Allmer, allowing women "to articulate realities that are otherwise repressed or excluded from public discourse". Breton would devote an anthology to it in 1940, swiftly banned by the Vichy regime. Humour, he writes, is "the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing". If we find Surrealism funny, we're not necessarily missing the point.

Surrealism is at the Pompidou Centre in Paris until 13 January 2025.

But live here? No thanks: Surrealism and Anti-fascism is at the Lenbachhaus in Munich until 2 March 2025.

The Traumatic Surreal is at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds until 16 March 2025.

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AI artwork of Alan Turing sells for $1m

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqdvz4w45wo, today

A painting by an AI robot of the eminent World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing has sold for $1,084,800 (£836,667) at auction.

Sotheby's said there were 27 bids for the digital art sale of "A.I. God", which had been originally estimated to sell for between $120,000 (£90,252) and $180,000 (£139,000).

Mathematician Turing was a pioneer of computer science and known as the father of artificial intelligence (AI).

The auction house said the historic sale "launches a new frontier in the global art market, establishing the auction benchmark for an artwork by a humanoid robot".

It added the work by Ai-Da Robot is "the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork sold at auction."

The work is a large scale original portrait of Turing, who studied at King's College, Cambridge.

The scientist played a crucial role in the Allies' victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two by helping to crack codes and deciphering the infamous Enigma machine at Bletchley Park.

After the war he produced a detailed design for a digital computer in the modern sense.

Sotheby's said the online sale, which ended at 19:00 GMT on Thursday, was bought by an undisclosed buyer for a price "far outstripping the artwork’s estimate price".

The auction house said the sale price for the first artwork by a humanoid robot artist "marks a moment in the history of modern and contemporary art and reflects the growing intersection between A.I. technology and the global art market".

Ai-Da Robot, which uses an advanced AI language model to speak, said: "The key value of my work is its capacity to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about emerging technologies."

The work "invites viewers to reflect on the god-like nature of AI and computing while considering the ethical and societal implications of these advancements", the robot said.

"Alan Turing recognised this potential, and stares at us, as we race towards this future."

Aidan Meller, director of the Ai-Da Robot Studios, said: "This auction is an important moment for the visual arts, where Ai-Da’s artwork brings focus on artworld and societal changes, as we grapple with the rising age of AI.

"The artwork 'AI God' raises questions about agency, as AI gains more power."

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The sale price was initially given as $1.3m, but was later corrected by the auctioneer.

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The bear who was a private in the Polish army

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4nd3n33yeo, today

A bear, famed for his love of beer, cigarettes and boxing and who was by the side of Allied troops in World War Two, has been made the subject of a play.

Wojtek was adopted by the 2nd Polish Corps in 1943, after his mother was shot by hunters.

The Syrian brown bear travelled with them from the Middle East as they were deployed to Italy. Allied soldiers described their shock at seeing Wojtek carrying artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The story of friendship and courage has been adapted for a production at Coventry's Albany Theatre by writer Alan Pollock from his children's book The Bear Who Went To War.

Sue Butler's father was one of the soldiers in the war alongside Wojtek.

"Dad said he was a symbol that united the soldiers. He was much more than a bear, he thought he was one of them," she said.

Like many veterans, Cpl Andrzej Gasior did not talk much about his experiences of war as she was growing up, said Mrs Butler, from Solihull.

"When he started to tell me stories about this soldier who was actually a bear, I didn't believe him at first. I thought he was winding me up.

"But it was in a local Polish club that a friend of his brought a picture to show me of Wojtek."

Mrs Butler's father had been put in a Siberian labour camp aged 16 after being caught crossing the Polish border to trade boots and food.

He became ill and said the war had saved his life as the invasion of Poland prompted the Soviet Union to let the Poles go.

It was then that he joined the Polish Free Army, as he called it, and met Wojtek while in the Middle East.

Wojtek was famed as a bear who liked beer and cigarettes but the truth may have been a little more prosaic.

The bear was especially partial to dates, which her father would carry in his top pocket as a treat, Mrs Butler said.

"If dad pretended to walk past Wojtek he knew that he'd got something and would make a beeline for him," she said.

"He told me other soldiers wrestled with the bear, and although he is sometimes seen drinking bottles of beer, my dad said the beer was sometimes too precious and often it was just water."

He would also ask for cigarettes, which he would eat.

Mrs Butler said the soldiers were very protective of their colleague, who served as a great morale booster.

"He was a displaced bear and they were displaced people, and they were both without their families," she said.

The animal was "very funny and quite mischievous," she added, but ultimately "thought he was one of them".

She said: "They had all come out [of Siberia] emaciated, and been downtrodden by the Russian state for such a long time, and this bear suddenly comes into their lives who hasn't got his mom."

When the Polish forces were deployed to Europe, the only way to take the bear with them was to "enlist" him.

So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign.

In one interview, a British veteran told how taken aback he was to see the 1.82m (6ft) bear carrying shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The company emblem became a picture of Wojtek carrying a shell.

Mrs Butler said her father had told her, "I'm sure he kept us going" during that battle.

"He absolutely showed that he was scared by the explosions but he got used to it and was carting artillery around the place in big boxes," she said.

'Sobbed like a baby'

When the Polish soldiers were demobilised, Wojtek lived in Berwickshire in Scotland before being taken to Edinburgh Zoo where he eventually died in 1963.

Cpl Gasior travelled to England, first working at a colliery in Preston before joining a circus and ending up in the West Midlands.

He married Johanna O'Connel, a canteen worker he met at Gaydon Airfield in Warwickshire, before the couple settled in Birmingham.

Mrs Butler said her father had gone to visit Wojtek in Edinburgh before moving south.

"Polish men of his era were taught not to cry as it was seen as a sign of weakness," she said.

"But he told me when he saw Wojtek at the zoo, he sobbed like a baby".

Playwright Mr Pollock said he had been alerted to the tale by a 90-year-old woman while carrying out research at Coventry's Polish Club.

He said: "I had to stop her and say, 'I'm sorry can you repeat that? A bear was a private in the Polish army?'

"She told me the story and from that moment I was gripped. I don't think I've ever heard a story that I so instantly knew I wanted to tell."

Many of the soldiers ended up settling in the UK, he said.

"They think when the battle is won they can go home, but of course Poland is occupied by the Soviet Union and they can never go back," he said.

"Most of them left home in 1939 or 1940 and many of them never saw their homes or their families ever again."

Mrs Butler said she had only recently heard of the production through her daughter-in-law who works at the theatre.

"I think Julia mentioned it to my son, Tom, and he said, 'I'm absolutely positive my grandad met that bear,' but I don't think she believed him at first."

She added: "It's a small world and sometimes things just all align, don't they?"

Her father lived to the age of 92 and died in 2014.

Mrs Butler said: "He's my hero, my dad is. He was an amazing man, and I'm just so proud to be his daughter."

The Bear Who Went to War by Alan Pollack is published by Old Barn Books and the play runs at the Albany Theatre Coventry until 2 November.

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AI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241018-ai-art-the-end-of-creativity-or-a-new-movement, today

Artificial intelligence is being used to generate paintings, images and even sculptures, with some selling for thousands of dollars. Do we need to reframe our definition of art?

In the drawing room of a stately home in rural Oxfordshire, I watch on as a dungaree-clad artist slowly and deliberately puts pen to paper. Her arm moves across the canvas, the marks gradually coalescing into an abstract portrait of herself.

It seems like a moment of creative expression. But this is no ordinary artist – she is the world's first humanoid robot artist, Ai-Da. By design, her very existence brings into question how we define art, and who, or in this case, what, can create it.

Will AI algorithms and robots like Ai-Da spell the end of human creativity and artistry, or can they be harnessed to augment our own creative potential?

Art in flux

When Marcel Duchamp proposed that a porcelain urinal be considered art and submitted it for exhibition in early 20th-Century New York, he flipped the art world on its head. He argued that anything could be considered as art, if chosen by the artist and labelled as such. It was a profoundly revolutionary thought which challenged previous notions of art as beautiful, technically skilful and emotive.

In much the same way, AI-created artworks are disrupting the accepted norms of the art world. As philosopher Alice Helliwell from Northeastern University London argues, if we can consider radical and divergent pieces like Duchamp's urinal and Tracey Emin's bed as art proper, how can something created by a generative algorithm be dismissed? After all, both were controversial at the time and contain objects that haven't technically been created by an "artist's" hand.

"Historically, the way we understand the definition of art has shifted," says Heliwell. "It is hard to see why a urinal can be art, but art made by a generative algorithm could not be."

Throughout history, every radical artistic movement has been intimately connected to the cultural zeitgeist of the time, a reflection of society's preoccupations and concerns, like Turner and his industrial landscapes and Da Vinci's obsession with science and mathematics. AI is no different. Ai-Da's creators, gallerist Aidan Meller and researcher Lucy Seal cite this as a pivotal reason for the existence of a humanoid artist like Ai-Da. She is the personification of one of contemporary society's current fears, the rise of job-snatching AI algorithms and potential robot domination.

But technological revolutions like artificial intelligence need not signify the "end of art" as many fear. Instead, they can help to kickstart an artistic metamorphosis and move us towards totally different ways of seeing and creating, something Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at the University of Oxford and author of The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, would contend.

Humans are just as prone to behaving like machines, repeating old behaviours and getting bogged down with rules, like a painter or musician locked into a particular style. "AI might help us to stop behaving like machines…and kick us into being creative again as humans," says du Sautoy. He sees it as a powerful collaborator in the pursuit of human creativity.

There is historical precedence for new technology liberating us from our creative shackles. Take the invention of photography in the 1800s for example. Some artists saw the camera as the antithesis of an artist, and photographs as the mortal enemy of the art establishment.

But instead of replacing painting, photography became a catalyst in the development of the experimental modern art movement of the 20th Century, as artists moved away from realism towards abstraction, a shift that paved the way for the contemporary art of today.

Who's the artist?

Walking around Ai-Da's country pile in Oxfordshire I got to appreciate the sheer breadth of her artworks to-date. Unsettling busts of herself with her eyes stapled shut, scarab beetles fused to her face; partial and ethereal depictions of computer scientist Alan Turing; and colourful pop-art inspired portraits of Glastonbury headliners. 

Unlike the numerous text-to-image generators like Dall-E and Midjourney that have the ability to create alarmingly plausible magazine front covers and win coveted art competitions, Ai-Da's artistic process doesn't rely solely upon the data on which she has been trained. (Find out more about AI training in this simple guide to machine learning.)

Ai-Da also makes use of the cameras in her eyes, which feed novel images into her algorithm, thereby creating new and unique works far removed from human-generated datasets. This is how she's able to create self-portraiture. Does this make her creative in her own right? And can we credit her with authorship, or does this reside with the artists upon whose work she's been trained and with the creators of her algorithm, who ultimately wrote her code?

Margaret Boden, a researcher in cognitive science at the University of Sussex in the UK, has developed one of the most widely accepted definitions of creativity to date. She sees it as the ability to generate ideas that are new, valuable and surprising. Using this definition, the works produced by machines like Ai-Da could be considered creative, argue her creators. Whether or not an algorithm or a robot itself can be described as a creative entity, an 'artist' in its own right, like a human, remains up for debate, and this in part comes down to authorship. 

Questions of authorship and data ownership plague the artificial intelligence narrative. Artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, who recently held an exhibition exploring collaborative artwork in the age of AI at London's Serpentine Gallery, want to confront the issue of data misuse and authorship in AI. The pair co-founded Spawning AI, a suite of tools aimed at empowering human creators to both prohibit AI from using their works and to find whether works of theirs have already been referenced in AI generated work.

Plagiarism is a legitimate concern for many artists as their work is used to train algorithms but also can then be copied in the works that generative AI tools produce.

But there are also artists who see AI as a new outlet for their own creativity – a fresh medium they can wield much like a brush or palette knife. Some artists, such as Sougwen Chung, are now exclusively training algorithms on their works alone in an attempt to push their own creative boundaries.

There is another argument at the heart of this issue too. The machine-learning processes used to train generative AI algorithms may be a creative process in themselves.

"Code exposed to data – existing artworks, for example – is able to learn, mutate and evolve," says du Sautoy. "It means that the code by the end of this learning process is very different from the original code written by the human. This means that there is a chance for the code to produce something that... deserves to be called the creativity of the code rather than the human who started the process.

"It's a bit like Picasso is made from the DNA of his parents but it is his learning and exposure to the world that resulted in his creativity. You would never credit that to the parents even though everything started with their code or DNA." (Learn more about machine learning and some of the other terms you need to understand AI better.)

Powerful algorithms called Creative Adversarial Networks (Cans) also now exist, designed to deliberately create something that goes against the patterns in the training data, breaking with the style of the art upon which it's been trained. This is leading to AIs that generate very surprising results. "Many machine learning algorithms are 'black boxes'," says Helliwell. "We do not fully know what is happening inside the system, even if we have designed it ourselves."

This is a common and unsettling problem throughout the AI world. How can we trust the decisions or outputs from an AI if we don't understand how it got there in the first place? (Read more about why humans may never understand AI.)

Is art uniquely human?

The prospect of truly artistic machines is also challenging another long-held belief about what makes us human. Art has long been seen as a uniquely human endeavour. Made by humans, for aesthetic appreciation by other humans, artworks themselves are imbued with the emotions of their creators. It is a visual representation of their desires and fears, frustrations and reverence, or at the very least their need to create for practical, economical and emotional reasons.

So, can we consider the creations of non-human entities to be art by the same definition? There are some who believe that animals already produce forms of art. And research has shown that pigeons seem to be able to discriminate between different types of artwork.

It all comes down to intent, this is "what truly distinguishes the creativity of the human and the machine", says du Sautoy. "No machine is driven to express itself creatively. It is prompted by the intention of the human."

Does this mean AI is not yet fully capable of creating true art? After all, computer algorithms lack any real-world experience and robots like Ai-Da, although capable of self-portraiture, don't actually possess self-awareness. This question remains hotly contested. For Helliwell a lack of intent shouldn't necessarily preclude AI works from being considered art.

More like this:

And perhaps that is what it comes down to. Art, goes the idiom, is in the eye of the beholder. As humans, for example, we identify patterns and admire the artistry evident in the natural world – the intricate web of a spider, the decorative plumage of a peacock. We often refer to bird calls as music and the mating displays of some animals as dance. There are numerous examples of animals exhibiting creative behaviours that we might label artistic. The Bower bird and pufferfish play with perspective, symmetry and colour in much the same way a human artist might, for example. And while these animals may not necessarily be intentionally creating these to be enjoyed as works of art, their actions are no less intentional in their pursuit of attracting a mate or warding off competitors.

What's the future?

However we look to define art or the artist, it's clear that AI algorithms and machines like Ai-Da are having an impact on the art world. Their works are exhibited alongside more traditional forms of art in established art institutions worldwide. Next year we'll see the world's first AI art gallery open its doors in LA, a permanent exhibition space for "ethical AI".

Eva Jäger, the creative AI lead and arts technologies curator at the Serpentine Gallery in London, is also helping to bring AI art to the masses, with a programme of exhibitions provoking critical discussion about the impact of technology on art.

For her, the future of AI art is not adversarial. Traditional forms of art will continue to exist, just as AI artwork will continue to develop. She sees the collaboration between human and machine as a space for real creative potential. She believes that the artist's intent and the human practice behind a piece or installation which utilises technology like AI are more important than just the final aesthetics.

"For me there are some really interesting generative images that get produced, but without the practice behind it I'm not sold on them, just because they're an amazing image," she says. "And I would say the same about painting. I’m much more interested in the systems, including the humans behind the work. I want to know what they are using the system for, what are they exploring? It's a mistake just to look at the final artefact."

And when it comes to evaluating the authenticity and credibility of AI art, one of the most contentious aspects of the AI art discipline, du Sautoy makes a compelling point. All art is a product of that which came before it, and creativity cannot come from nothing – all artists whether human, robot or algorithm, build upon the works of others.

"Too many people discuss creativity as if it is some uniquely human magical process, that it conjures something from nothing like a magician," says du Sautoy. "But that is just because we don't understand our own creativity."

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Michelangelo's David and 10 artworks that caused a scandal

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171018-the-works-too-scandalous-for-display, today

As a Florida principal was forced to resign after students were shown Michelangelo's statue of David, Kelly Grovier takes a look at the history of censorship in the art world.

When the principal of a charter school in Florida was recently forced to resign after parents alleged that their children had been exposed to pornography when shown photos of the Renaissance master Michelangelo's sculpture of the biblical figure David, many around the world were surprised. That itself is surprising. Almost since the moment that the 17ft (5m)-high nude marble statue was chiselled into scandalous shape in around 1504, Michelangelo's masterpiece has stood its ground against perennial accusations of indecency. The sculpture hadn't even strutted its way through the 16th Century before being fitted with a ludicrous loincloth of metal fig leaves to mitigate its immodesty. It was only in the middle of the 20th Century that similar leaves were finally plucked from the groin of a cast replica of the famous statue on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which had been given to Queen Victoria in 1857.

The controversial decision taken by the board of Tallahassee Classical School to pressure principal Hope Carrasquilla to quit provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on which works in modern history, while considered by some observers to be unacceptably shocking, have changed the way we think about art. What follows are 10 works created in the years since the fig leaves were removed from the V&A's David that have shocked contemporary sensibilities and helped redefine the very essence of art.

More like this:

- David: The original male model

- Hidden symbols in Vermeer's paintings

- Striking images of ignored Americans

1. Marc Quinn, Self, 1991

Every five years, over the course of five months, British artist Marc Quinn siphons off 5L of his own blood and spills them into a translucent, refrigerated mould of his face. The result is an ever-emerging series of self-portraits into which the artist can legitimately claim to have poured more of himself than any artist that came before him. For some observers, Quinn’s ongoing series Self is nothing more than a gruesome and vampiric stunt. For others, the work embodies a poignant and daring contribution to the tradition of self-representation to which such great artists as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Cindy Sherman have contributed – one that profoundly highlights the fragility of being.

 

2. Allen Jones, Chair, 1969

Unveiled to accusations that its creator, British Pop artist Allen Jones, treated objects like women and vice versa, Chair (along with companion pieces Hatstand and Table) contorted scantily-clad female mannequins into an un-ergonomically engineered suite of scurrilously lewd furniture. On International Women’s Day in March 1986, the work was doused with paint stripper by a pair of activists appalled by the sculpture’s chauvinist sensibility. The acid ate away at the face and neck, melting the awkward somersault in which the PVC work was forever frozen into a desperate duck-and-roll.

 

3. Piero Manzoni, Merda d’Artista, 1961

If Duchamp’s unused receptacle of human waste could be embraced by the art world as an aesthetic object in its own right, it is perhaps unsurprising that, at some stage, an artist would experiment with excrement itself and attempt to pass it off as a work of art. In 1961, Italian avant-garde artist Piero Manzoni (who, a year earlier, left observers aghast when he presented a balloon filled with his own breath as a work of art), did just that – cramming into 90 tin cans, 2700g of his own faeces. The work is thought to be an elaborate response to a derisory comment that his father, who owned a canning factory, once made to him, likening his work to excrement. In 2016, one of his son’s cans sold at auction for €275,000 (£245,000).

 

4. Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

In 1953, the same year that the curators at the V&A believed modern eyes could handle David's genitals, the US artist Robert Rauschenberg tried his own hand at the art of stripping things away. Curious to know if a work of art could be created by removing marks from a surface with an eraser, rather than adding them with pencil, brush or chisel as artists conventionally do, Rauschenberg convinced his friend, the Dutch-American abstractionist Willem de Kooning, to sacrifice a recent drawing of his to the experiment. The result is a paper scrubbed free of any discernible picture, challenging observers to decide whether the image-less image is an image at all, or whether the real work on display is the empty frame that surrounds the absence – a sculptural holding place for endless artistic loss.

5. Judy Chicago, Dinner Party, 1979

Consisting of 39 place settings commemorating the contribution of women to cultural history (from Sappho to Virginia Woolf), US artist Judy Chicago’s triangularly constructed banquet table has been both acclaimed for its pioneering perspective and derided for its shocking vulgarity. The work is dominated by almost two score hand-painted china plates, many of which are decorated with a blossoming vulva-like butterfly symbol. Believing that the work has “too many vaginas”, contemporary British artist Cornelia Parker scorned the installation in The Guardian as “all about Judy Chicago's ego rather than the poor women she's supposed to be elevating”. “We're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit depressing.”

 

6. Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981

More than one iconic wall fell in 1989. In the dead of night on 15 March, eight months before sledgehammers began pounding the Berlin Wall, a team of construction workers descended on Federal Plaza in New York City to slice into pieces a 120ft (36m)-long, 12ft (3.6m)-high, controversial barricade of steel that had been erected eight years earlier. Contending that the work, a ground-breaking sculpture by the US artist Richard Serra, provided shelter for terrorists, vermin and vandals alike, a jury concluded the minimalist sculpture should be removed and hauled off to a warehouse.

 

7. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, 1983

Not everyone who looked upon the 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, skirted surreally in pink polypropylene fabric for two weeks in May 1983 by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was seduced by its fairytale magic. Environmentalists protested the work’s installation, worried about the long-term effect of the 6.5m sq ft (603,870 sq m) of synthetic plastic stretched across the habitats of manatees and nesting ospreys. The dialogue that constructing the work generated, which forced local officials and residents to discuss the fragility of the environment in which they lived, was among the artists’ aims.

 

8. Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998

Though the bed, as an archetypal object, has served as an indispensable prop in some of the greatest works of Western art – from Titian’s Venus of Urbino to Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, from Goya’s alternately nude and dressed Majas to Henry Fuseli’s devilish The Nightmare – public outrage at the installation by British artist Tracey Emin of her dishevelled My Bed for the 1998 Turner Prize Exhibition was intense and sustained. The site of a depressive episode in the artist’s life, surrounded by the material debris of a tousled psyche, the rumpled bed quickly became Exhibit A for those contending that contemporary art had lost its way. Defenders of the work were surprised that, more than 80 years after Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, a messy bed could spark such outrage and wondered whether the real objection was that a woman should so brazenly set up residency in a man’s museum.

9. David Černý, Shark, 2005

Riffing off of British artist Damien Hirst’s audacious installation The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), which featured a howling shark suspended in a formaldehyde solution, Czech artist David Černý’s arresting vitrine dared to float before visitors a hogtied sculpture of the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For some, the work came too close to casting Hussein in the role of victim. For others, the piece was gratuitously graphic. The scheduled exhibition of the controversial work at a museum in Middelkerke, Belgium, in early 2006 was ultimately cancelled, by decree of the town’s mayor Michel Landuyt, out of fear “that certain population groups would find the work too provocative".

 

10. Paul McCarthy, Tree, 2014

Occasionally, the urge to censor a controversial work has been acted upon by offended observers rather than cautious curators. Such was the case in October 2014, when US artist Paul McCarthy’s huge inflatable sculpture Tree, erected as a Christmas display on the Place Vendôme in Paris, was fatally toppled by vandals and subsequently deflated. Once the sculpture’s close resemblance to the shape of a sex prop was pointed out by commentators – a kinship that was, then, impossible to un-see – there was no protecting the colossal work from assault. Nor did the artist himself escape unscathed. An outraged attendee at the sculpture’s installation confronted McCarthy and slapped his face three times before zipping off, like a popped balloon, into the crowd.

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The rare blue the Maya invented

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180816-the-rare-blue-the-mayans-invented, today

The colour survives in the work of 17th Century Spanish colonial painters, a symbol of the wealth that ultimately doomed the Maya, writes Devon Van Houten Maldonado.

In 17th Century Europe, when Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens painted their famous masterworks, ultramarine blue pigment made from the semi-precious lapis lazuli stone was mined far away in Afghanistan and cost more than its weight in gold. Only the most illustrious painters were allowed to use the costly material, while lesser artists were forced to use duller colours that faded under the sun. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution in the 19th Century that a synthetic alternative was invented, and true ultramarine blue finally became widely available.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, colonial Baroque works created by artists like José Juárez, Baltasar de Echave Ibia and Cristóbal de Villalpando in early 17th Century Mexico – New Spain – were full of this beautiful blue. How could this be? Lapis lazuli was even rarer in the New World. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th Century that archaeologists discovered the Maya had invented a resilient and brilliant blue, centuries before their land was colonised and their resources exploited. 

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The ultramarine blue procured from lapis lazuli in Europe was not only incredibly expensive, but also extremely laborious to make. In Europe, blue was reserved for the most important subject matter. Rubens' Adoration of the Magi – the version that hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and which he worked on for over 20 years – is an example. The colour was primarily used to paint the robes of the Virgin Mary, and later extended to include other royalty and holy figures. In Mexico, on the other hand, blue was used to paint altogether less holy and everyday subjects.

Archaeologists studying pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican ruins were surprised by the discovery of blue murals in the Maya Riviera, modern day Mexico and Guatemala, from as early as 300 AD, perhaps the most famous being the murals at the temple of Chichén Itzá (created around 450 AD). The colour had a special ceremonial significance for the Maya. They covered sacrificial victims and the altars on which they were offered in a brilliant blue paint, writes Diego de Landa Calderón, a bishop in colonial Mexico during the 16th Century, in his first-hand account.

Archaeologists were puzzled by the resilience of the blue in the murals. The añil plant, part of the indigo family, was widely available in the region but was mostly used for dyes rather than paint. Indigo was quick to fade in the sunlight and natural elements, so experts mused that the Maya couldn’t have used the same widely available dye to paint the murals. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the source of Maya blue’s resilience through the centuries was discovered: a rare clay called attapulgite, which was mixed with the dye from the añil plant. During colonisation native materials like Maya blue and cochineal were exploited along with every other resource of the land and its people in the New World. These colours, which supposedly represented the wealth of the Maya empire, would stand as a symbol of all that would be plundered.

Rhapsody in blue

Master painters from the Americas are discussed in art history – if they’re mentioned at all – as a lesser school of Baroque compared to Caravaggio and Rubens. It's overly simplistic to assume that these Baroque masters were only impersonating their European predecessors. In fact, second and third generation painters born in Mexico City, such as Juárez and Echave Ibia, departed from European aesthetics, but arrived to something uniquely layered: enormous and sophisticated compositions that drew upon the full vibrancy of the New World. At Mexico’s National Art Museum (Munal) in Mexico City, works by Juárez seen chronologically show his development from a European impersonator to a New Spanish Baroque master. His early canvases departed from the dramatic spotlighting and warmth of European Baroque imagery and later moved into cold saturation throughout the picture plane (vibrant blues, yellows, greens and reds), multiple light sources, collaged compositions and grand scale – and in part because the use of local materials, such as Maya blue, expanded his palette.   

While Rubens also used vibrant colours, his compositions, on the whole, were more chaotic and warmer than those of Juárez. His pallet was even more vibrant than Rubens’, perhaps the most vibrant of the European Baroques, but his compositions were more akin to Caravaggio. Caravaggio's canvases were, without fail, full of rich reds and yellows, but nearly devoid of blue – if you think of a Caravaggio masterpiece, blue is usually absent. The closest to a blue-tinted Caravaggio you can find is Juárez’s work, but, despite his prolific reach and realised compositions, Juárez died in poverty.  If Juárez died without a peso to his name, how would he have had the resources to order large quantities of precious lapis lazuli from Europe?

On the other hand, Villalpando, often said to be the most prolific colonial painter in New Spain, imitated the chaotic compositions by Rubens. Villalpando fits more neatly into the European history of Baroque painting and didn't depart from Rubens' ‘fear of space’ – the Baroque notion that every space of the canvas must crammed with imagery and incident – thus he was accepted by the canon of art history as the mascot of Novohispanic Baroque painting. Still, as much as he wanted to imitate Rubens, Villalpando painted with Mesoamerican materials and labour. The consistent result – the same as his peers in Mexico – was that his paintings and murals were cooler and more saturated. His mural adorning the dome of Puebla's cathedral was the first and only of its kind in New Spain. Swirling blue and purple clouds back the images of the virgin, the saints and the angels painted by Villalpando. Even though he sought to make European Baroque in the Americas, his materials gave him away as a criollo, a non-mixed-race descendant of the original Spanish settlers, from Mexico City.

Baltasar de Echave Ibia painted such elaborate blues that he became known as ‘El Echave de los azules’ (the Echave of the blues). His father, Baltasar de Echave Orio, also used blue generously, but Echave Ibia was especially famous for his copious use and mastery of the colour. There is a reason why Ibia, working in Mexico City between the 17th and 18th Centuries, had access to seemingly limitless amounts of blue. All three had had sources of the brilliant colour closer to home.

The lack of written evidence of the use of añil or Maya blue in Novohispanic Baroque paintings is made up for with visual evidence. From these painters and others in the colonised Americas it's apparent that Baroque artists in the New World weren’t using the same blue pigment as their European peers. The lapis lazuli blue being used in Europe was a dark ultramarine blue. While the blue being used in New Spain reflected the vivid azure, originally extracted from añil by the Maya. Maya blue is one of the most durable of all Mesoamerican colours, as seen in the 1,600-year-old murals at Chichén Itzá. Perhaps the same resistance to time has kept Baroque canvases and murals in the Americas, from Mexico to Peru, bright through the centuries.

This cross-pollination of influences, from Maya to European Baroque, happening in Latin America on the canvases of criollo painters suggests globalism began much sooner than academic history has led us to believe.

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The colour that means both life and death

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180709-the-colour-that-means-both-life-and-death, today

Green has symbolised both decay and regeneration, offering a bridge between this world and the next, writes Kelly Grovier.

Beware of green. It can’t be trusted. Leonardo da Vinci knew, and cautioned his contemporaries against the pigment’s toxic instability. Its beauty, Leonardo warned, “vanishes into thin air”. Volatile and evanescent, green is more than just a colour. It is the energy that connects us to the unknown. Remove green from the palette of art history and a bridge between life and death would disappear. Equal parts morbid and vital, green curdles the cadaverous cheeks of Pablo Picasso’s macabre portrait of his young friend, Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself dead in lovelorn torment at the age of 20, while at the same time ignites with joyous chlorophyllic fire the life-affirming and ever-verdant canvases of Claude Monet.

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To dabble in green is not merely to tread a path between being and unbeing, but to make inroads into the mysteries of each. Simultaneously the colour of putrefaction and of verdurous regeneration, green participates with unbiased vividity in decay and rebirth. Perhaps it is green’s teasing ambiguity that compelled Leonardo himself, against his own better counsel, to clad his most famous and enigmatic subject, the Mona Lisa, in a darkening shade of that colour – one that has since bruised itself to a sublime and submarine blackness in the subconscious of cultural history.

Donning the deepest of shadowy green costumes, La Gioconda night-swims in the vitrine of our psyche and has long been recognised as a mystical commuter between the world of the living and that of the dead. “Like the vampire,” the 19th-Century English essayist Walter Pater once wrote of her, “she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave”. Describing Leonardo’s inscrutable sitter as “older than the rocks among which she sits”, Pater proceeds to imagine that Mona Lisa has, throughout history, returned again and again as everything from “a diver in deep seas” to a savvy operator who has woven “strange webs with Eastern merchants”. Ceaselessly resurgent in her murky green gown, which symbolised her status as a merchant’s wife, Mona, according to Pater, was “the mother of Helen of Troy” and the “mother Mary”.

Long before Leonardo reached for green, the colour had been assigned a special esoteric place in cultural imagination. Ancient Egyptians reserved green for the bold beryl complexion of their god of life and death, Osiris – ruler of the underworld, who held dominion over the passage of souls between this world and the next. Typical depictions of Osiris, such as one found on the 13th-Century BC walls of the burial tomb of Horemheb, the last monarch of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, portray a skinny, grassy-skinned god, whose false pharaoh’s beard marks him out as a deity of incontestable pre-eminence.

Perennially young, Osiris was believed to be a serial resuscitator, both of himself and of the natural world. Holding sway over the flow of floods and flourishing of flora alike, leafy-cheeked Osiris, it was believed, would eventually show the souls of Egypt’s kings the path to resurrection.

Flora and fauna

For millennia, concocting green pigments was achieved by a variety of artistic alchemies that harnessed the hues of everything from pulverised malachite to the juice of buckthorn berries, from dessicated foxgloves and fraxinus leaves, to soaking yellow saffron in the purple dye of woad, also known as the ‘The Asp of Jerusalem’. Verdigris, among the more common iterations of the colour, and the one of which Leonardo was most wary, is forged in a curious ritual that involves the slow sousing in wine of a brass or copper blade.

An acetic crust of green that scabs to the metallic surface is then scraped clean and ground into pigment. It was a green ghost of similar chemical contrivance that confirmed to scientists digging recently for the remains of the 16th-Century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that they had indeed found their target. Known to have worn a prosthetic nose to replace the one he’d lost in a sword fight in 1566, Brahe’s aesthetic skull bore traces of copper and zinc when, like a disciple of Osiris, it eventually came up for air in 2012.

Fertile with life, even in death, the invocation of green in countless masterpieces from antiquity to the present day impregnates our eye with expectancy. Everything about the physique, posture and gestures of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini’s green-enrobed wife, who seems to rest her tired hand tenderly on her tummy’s bump in Jan van Eyck’s famous painting, The Arnolfini Portrait (painted in 1434), leads our modern mind to suspect that she is pregnant, however convinced art historians may be that she isn’t. The great gush of cascading green that capsizes our eye, scholars contend, is more likely a symbol of hope for the eventual blessing of children. Green springs eternal.

An alternative reading of the riddling portrait only amplifies the eeriness of green’s potential to wed the living and the dead. According to one theory, the depiction of the woman in Van Eyck’s work is herself a composite double-portrait of two successive wives of Giovanni di Nicolao – his first having died in childbirth. Supporters of this view point to tropes of death that haunt the painting, such as the extinguished wick on the candle above her. Certainly the complex convex mirror, bolted to the back of the painting, which warps the couple’s reflection as if into a different continuum of reality, compounds the sense of strangely splitting selves that reverberate from the painting. If ever there was a colour capable of cloaking such a curious compression of life and death, it’s green.

So green goes, sowing into the story of art the mysteries of our own fleeting appearance in the world. The murky green water that laps against the ochre edge of the River Stour in John Constable’s famous Romantic landscape The Hay Wain, delineates a boundary between the world that the artist can see in the here-and-now and one that haunts his imagination from childhood. Look closer at the weave of summer greenness at which the little dog in the foreground appears to pant, and you can barely discern the ghost of a horseman and barrel that the artist had once intended to include in the painting – a spectre that, over time, is re-sculpting itself from the verdurous summer air that Constable has mystically conjured.

Though rightly celebrated for the accuracy of his carefully observed clouds, Constable is a master too of earthy hues and terrestrial textures. The tapestry of greens he weaves in The Hay Wain is a tour de force of that colour’s ability to convey the vibrancy of nostalgia for a place that ceaselessly shifts in one’s memory between wilting loss and luminous revelation.

Hiding in plain sight

In more recent eras of artistic expression, green has continued to be an enigmatic hue that hides as much as it reveals. Paul Gauguin’s seminal symbolist painting Green Christ (1889) is a teasing tangle of the colour’s contradictory connotations. Over a stone statue of the deceased Christ in the middle distance of the painting, a lucent layer of moss has stitched itself like a second skin. The face of a Breton woman, who stands in the shadow of that sculpture, is tinged a sepulchral green, as if she were slowly turning into the life-in-death and death-in-life statue – as if a kind of chromatic continuum exists between the physical world she inhabits and a mystical one that lies beyond.

Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte’s famous anti-self-portrait, The Son of Man (1964), defies the logic of likenesses by refusing to let the viewer see the key features of the artist’s face by interposing between them and us the greenest of green apples the mind is capable of picturing. “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see,” Magritte observed to an interviewer. “There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of quite an intense feeling, a sort of conflict one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

No contemporary artist has understood more profoundly the rhythms of the visible that is not there and the visible that is, than the Irish-American abstract painter Sean Scully. The bold vertical columns of Scully’s The Bather (1983), inspired by Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River, painted 70 years earlier, are stripped-down stand-ins for the already over-stylised bodies Scully recalls from Matisse’s work. Intensified by the boxy protrusions that complicate the carpentry of Scully’s work, which physically intrudes into the gallery-goer’s space, the ficus greens of Scully’s torso-wide trunks have succeeded in achieving an effect to which centuries of artists have only aspired: converting green from perishable colour into purest feeling.

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The shady past of the colour pink

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180419-the-shady-past-of-the-colour-pink, today

A hue now associated with innocence once had a murkier meaning: Kelly Grovier looks at the ways in which pink has represented violence and seduction.

Pink is a double-edged sword. While red is raucous and racy, and white is prim and pure, pink cuts both ways. Long before the word “pink” attached itself to the pretty pastel shade of delicate carnations, as we define the term today, the London underworld enlisted it for something rather less frilly or fragrant – to denote the act of stabbing someone with a sharp blade. “He pink’d his Dubblet”, so reads an entry for the word in a 17th-Century dictionary of street slang used by “Beggars, Shoplifters, Highwaymen, Foot-Pads and all other Clans of Cheats and Villains”, describing a lethal lunge through a man’s padded jacket, “He run him through”.

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At what point the unlikely linguistic slide was made from mortal piercing to mellow pigment, no one can say for sure. But the enticing hue itself, by whatever name it was known before the assignment of “pink” to the colour chart in the 18th Century, has kept culture blushing since antiquity. Now seductive, now innocent, pink is coquettish and coy, sultry and sly.

Remove pink from the palette of art history and a teasing dimension to the story of image-making would be lost. Edgar Degas’s Pink Dancers would fall flat-footed and Pablo Picasso’s pivotal pink period wouldn’t rise to the occasion.

A flesh in the pan

A key moment in pink’s emergence as an essential element in the development of painting is the creation by the Early Renaissance Italian painter Fra Angelico in the middle of the 15th Century of his famous fresco in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, Italy, The Annunciation, which depicts the moment in the New Testament that the Virgin Mary is informed by the Archangel Gabriel that she will become the mother of Christ. Situated at the top of a staircase solemnly ascended daily by pious monks, Fra Angelico’s ground-breaking painting is one into which an observer’s spirit is summoned to levitate.

Crucial to sparking that mystical lift-off in the fresco is the portrayal of the ethereal Archangel – who has himself mystically crossed planes of being to swoop into Mary’s material sphere. Never mind the polychromatic wings, what’s most surprising about Gabriel’s depiction is Fra Angelico’s decision to clad him in plush pleats of sumptuous pink.

We know from a contemporary artist’s handbook on how to concoct pigments (Cennino Ceninni’s Il libro dell'arte, published a few decades before Fra Angelico painted his fresco) that pink had been traditionally reserved primarily for the rendering of flesh. “Made from the loveliest and lightest sinopia that is found and is mixed and mulled with St. John’s white”, Cennini explains, “this pigment does you great credit if you use it for painting faces, hands and nudes on walls”.

By draping Gabriel in the lushest of pinks, Fra Angelico fleshes the Archangel out as a being of body and blood, breaking down the distinction between holy spirit and ephemeral flesh. Pink is the pivot that humanises heaven. No one would ever see the colour the same way again. In the ensuing centuries, artists would invoke pink as shorthand for the blurring of boundaries.

Bloom of Christ

As the focus of Renaissance master Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, a sprig of blushing carnations handed to the Virgin Mary by the infant Christ, may seem unremarkable enough at first glance. In fact it amounts to a kind of miraculous wrinkle in the fabric of time. According to religious tradition, dianthus (the Greek name for the plant, meaning “flower of God”), did not appear in the world until Mary wept at her son’s crucifixion.

The flower’s anachronistic appearance in Raphael’s scene, therefore, tinged with the future blood of the baby who holds it, mysteriously establishes a pink kink in the linear unfolding of the universe.

Over time, pink would eventually blossom beyond the petals of its complex theologies to inflect a wider array of secular personality, all the while retaining its elusive allure and capacity to tease. By the 18th Century, pink was offering itself as the colour of choice for portraying high-profile mistresses, daring observers to deny its very legitimacy as a respectable hue.

Famous portraits by the French Rococo portraitist Maurice Quentin de la Tour of Madame de Pompadour and by the English artist George Romney of his muse Emma, Lady Hamilton (later mistress of Lord Nelson), posing as a mythological maenad, reveal how decidedly deconsecrated the colour had become.

La Tour’s full-length pastel-pencil portrait of the official chief mistress to Louis XV of France, begun around 1748, is a rumbunctious jungle gym of superfluous pinks that spider across every inch and threaten to suffocate its subject. Here, pink is an energy that vibrates from the sitter to the secular subjects with which Pompadour has surrounded herself – music, astronomy, and literature.

Porcelain pink

A patron of the porcelain trade, Pompadour had famously inspired the minting by the Sevres porcelain factory of a new hue of pink, delicately bruised by dabs of blue and black. To Pompadour, pink was no longer a mere accessory but a partner in crime – an aspirational second skin into which she grew intellectually and emotionally. She became her colour.

No painting embodies pink’s gradual pendulum movement from the spiritual to the secular more vividly than the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s exuberant The Swing, painted around 1767, between La Tour’s and Romney’s works. Here, a fabulous flounce of flowing rose is frozen in mid swivel as the swinging girl, pillowed in pinkness, flicks loose a silk shoe, attracting the titillated attention of any number of camouflaged male gazes hiding in the bushes around her. We’re a long way from the pink whisper of angels now.

In more recent times, pink continues to be seized upon by artists keen to confound our expectations of what notes or message the floral pigment can confidently carry. Having established a formidable reputation in the middle of the 20th Century as a first-generation Abstract Expressionist, eschewing figurative subjects entirely in the 1950s, Canadian-born American artist Philip Guston reached for pink in a dramatic turn back to representational art in the late 1960s.

By then, the colour itself had undergone something of a commercial transformation in American retail culture, having begun the century as a shade more often associated with boys and masculinity than fairy princesses and little girls’ dolls. But by the time Guston began introducing a menacing cast of Ku Klux Klan-inspired cartoon goons, whose implausibly pale pink stubby hoods continue to menace popular imagination to this day, the colour had been re-commodified as delicate and feminine. Grabbing pink by the scruff for his unsettling scenes of a seedy Americana, Guston slaps Barbie across the chops.

At the same moment that Guston’s provocative pink was poking the art world in the eye, scientific studies were underway by Alexander Schauss, Director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research, to determine whether manipulations of the colour could help control the behaviour of subjects surrounded by it. The result of Schauss’s investigation was the concoction of the psychologically subtle shade now known as “Baker-Miller Pink”, after the Naval correctional institute in Seattle, Washington where the pigment was successfully tested on the walls of inmates’ cells and credited with a significant calming of aggressive urges.

Yet despite its ability to inspire docility, pink is still picking fights, challenging our perceptions to an aesthetic duel. Upon learning that the British artist Anish Kapoor had signed a contract giving him exclusive rights to a recently engineered colour known as Vantablack (the darkest shade ever devised), and the legal right to prohibit other artists from doing so, Kapoor’s younger contemporary Stuart Semple saw red.

Emboldened by Kapoor’s black embargo, Semple began concocting a supremely-fluorescent pink paint he contends is the “pinkest pink” ever contemplated (“no one has ever seen a pinker pink”, he insists). As a poke in the eye of Kapoor, Semple has made his colour available at a small price to anyone in the world so long as they confirm that they are not Anish Kapoor nor friendly enough with Kapoor to share it with him. En garde, Kapoor. You’ve been pink’d.

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The toxic colour that comes from volcanoes

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180227-the-toxic-colour-that-comes-from-volcanoes, today

For centuries, the orange pigment was sourced from a toxic mineral. Kelly Grovier looks at a hue that alchemists believed was crucial to creating the Philosopher’s Stone – and which allows art to swivel between different states of being.

Expunge orange from the history of art and the whole thing collapses. The sky above Edvard Munch’s The Scream falls down and the fire that ignites Frederic Leighton’s famous Flaming June flames out. Take away orange, and everything from the warm eternal glow of Egyptian tomb painting to the troubled stubble of Vincent van Gogh’s smouldering self-portraits vanishes. A savvy arbiter between resolute red and unyielding yellow, orange is a pigment that pivots. It’s a hinge of a hue that enables a work of art to swivel between contrary states of being – this world and another, life and death.

Outside the frame of art history, orange has proved an unusually elastic symbol, blossoming into a spectrum of shapes and cultural meanings. Although the influential European royal House of Orange traces its name back further than the actual coining of the colour in the 1540s, its prominent son, William III (better known as William of Orange), quickly embraced the linguistic coincidence in the 1570s. His orange-white-and-blue rebel flag would become the forerunner of the modern tricolour of The Netherlands. From there orange took on the complexion of everything from Swiss fire engines to the suits worn by astronauts in the International Space Station. But it’s in the realms of art and aesthetics that the colour has fructified more soulfully.

From antiquity to the end of the 19th Century, a volcanic mineral found in sulphurous fumaroles (great gashes in the Earth’s crust) was a significant source for the harvesting of orange pigment. The highly toxic orpiment, rich in lethal arsenic, ripens from mellow yellow into outrageous orange when subjected to the heat of a fire.

Convinced that the luminous shimmer of orpiment (its name is a contraction of Latin aurum, meaning ‘gold’, and pigmentum meaning ‘colour’) must be a key ingredient in concocting the Philosopher’s Stone, alchemists for centuries risked exposure to the noxious substance. So did artists. To dabble in the occult of orange was to flirt with mortality and immortality in equal measure.

A spark to a flame

Intentionally or not, that ambiguous aura is irrepressible wherever orange is conjured in art. Take for example the French Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s portrait of a generic writer captured at a moment of intense vision: Inspiration, painted around 1769. The poet’s plush orange jacket – its vibrant rumples flickering like flares – threatens to engulf the allegorical subject of a poet whose imagination has just been ignited. The furrowed velour has become an outward reflection of the writer’s mind. This evaporative moment of reverie that illuminates the subject, as if from inside his soul, will either ensure his eternal fame as a celebrated bard or will set on fire his very being. Fashion him in any other colour than orange and the work’s flustering power would be utterly lost.

Nor is it possible to imagine Self-portrait with Halo and Snake, painted by the post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin more than a century after Fragonard’s canvas, soaked in any other colours than the two competing complexions of orange that dominate and divide its radiant surface into competing territories of piousness and malevolence. Created by Gauguin while living in the North-western French fishing village of Le Pouldu, the work portrays, in its upper half, a saintly indifference to worldly temptations, as symbolised by a dangling sprig of forbidden fruit. To make certain we don’t miss the unmissable point, the artist has crowned himself in this hemisphere of the work with an angelic halo. The lower half of the wood panel, however, reveals an uncontainable susceptibility to evil as the seductive snake from the Garden of Eden has the artist wrapped around his proverbial finger. Tying the work together tonally is a dramatic shift at its equator in shades of orange – not unlike orpiment itself, before and after its purifying baptism by fire.

And so it goes, work by work, century after century: wherever the colour orange dictates the temperature of a work of art, we know we’ve arrived at a precarious hinterland between a universe we can see and a mysterious unknown we tentatively feel. How else can you characterise the realm in which the liquified face of Munch’s hero howls under a strange and estranging burnt-cinnamon sky in The Scream? How else can you describe the eternal space in which Henri Matisse’s iconic The Dance whirls apocalyptically on the edge of oblivion?

Commissioned in 1909 by a wealthy Russian businessman to adorn the staircase of his mansion, at first glance The Dance might appear the apotheosis of rhythmic delight and synchronised levity. But the eerie apricot tinge of the five ecstatic nudes, who seem to have subsumed into their very being the armageddon orange of Munch’s work, is a tip-off that something more complex and perilous is at play. The two dancers who stretch the foreground of the work have lost their grip on each other’s hands, as the one closest to us begins slipping to the ground. Her left foot is already sliding out of view. Far from depicting untroubled joy, Matisse’s carefully choreographed masterpiece teeters on cosmic disaster. The very rotation of the world is left dangerously in doubt.

Amber alert

Munch and Matisse set the tone, as it were, for the portentous temperament of orange in modern and contemporary art. Throughout the 20th Century, the ominous refulgence of orange will find itself refracted variously in the works of everyone from Francis Bacon, where it sets the sinister scene for the disturbing Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), as well as Rene Magritte’s Art of Living (1967), where the colour inflates itself to popping point as a surreal cranium. The syncopated pigments and shudders of Rhythm, joy of life, painted in 1931, is characteristic of how crucial orange is to the work and imagination of the Ukrainian-born French artist Sonia Delauney, who once protested: “You know I don’t like orange”. Like it or not, orange is frequently the heat that holds together – while threatening to break apart – the visual music of her sinuous mosaics.

As crucial as orange has been to the story of art through the end of the last century, it has already dyed itself indelibly into the unfolding fabric of contemporary artistic consciousness. Among the most celebrated major works of the new millennium, The Gates, by Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff and French artist Jeanne-Claude (known together as Christo and Jeanne-Claude), colonised New York City’s Central Park in February 2005 with over 7,500 passageways – each flowing with orange nylon fabric. The lyrical succession of thresholds, which fostered a poetic sense of the endless comings and goings of life – birth and rebirth, mortality and eternity – could, on reflection, have only been draped in stirring saffron. To some, the colour echoes the robes of Buddhist monks. But to my mind, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who passed away four years later) were rekindling a sacred flame, inviting those who would come to bask their weary souls in the transformative power of that most mystical of ancient tints: orange.

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The mysterious painting that changed how we see colour

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180214-the-mysterious-painting-that-changed-how-we-see-colour, today

Marcel Duchamp’s last painting has influenced artists for a century. Kelly Grovier looks at how it inspired the modern colour chart – and at its 17th-Century predecessor.

This year marks the centenary of one of the more curious milestones in modern cultural history – a landmark in image-making with intriguing echoes of a long-forgotten tome from the 17th Century. In 1918, the French avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp picked up his brush after a four-year hiatus from painting and created a mysterious work that changed forever the way artists use and understand colour. After completing his painting, Duchamp put his brush back down again and, for the next 50 years (until his death in 1968), never painted another picture.

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The work in question is awkwardly proportioned – over 3m (9.4ft) long, yet barely two-thirds of a metre tall – and was commissioned to hang above a bookcase in the library of the US collector and patron of the arts Katherine Dreier. At first glance, the canvas (which Duchamp eccentrically entitled T um’, a terse abbreviation of the tetchy French phrase tu m’ennuies, or ‘you bore me’) appears to do everything it can to be something other than a painting. Its surface is dominated by shadowy allusions to a series of controversial sculptures that Duchamp had recently been making – found objects such as a hat rack, a corkscrew, and a bicycle wheel – that he christened ‘readymades’.

In stark contrast to these large ghostly echoes of another artistic medium, a scatter of worldly debris is strewn across the painting: safety pins, a bolt, and a brush for cleaning bottles. According to Yale University, “Duchamp summarises different ways in which a work of art can suggest reality: as shadow, imitation, or actual object.” Stretching over this odd array of forms is a carefully-rendered cascade of colourful lozenge-shaped tiles that swoop vibrantly into the centre of the painting from the top left, like the tail of a mechanical polychromatic comet.

Anyone who has ever shopped in a DIY store for domestic paint will recognise immediately this splay of colour tiles. But in 1918, pigment samples from commercial colour charts were still relatively cutting-edge in their retail trendiness, having only hit shop floors towards the end of the previous century. As yet unassigned to an actual object, these ‘readymade’ swatches of colour are at once both physical and theoretical; they haver between the real world of things waiting to be painted and a realm of pure mind in which those things can still be any colour.

A pigment of our imagination

In a sense, this endless deck of dyes bursting into the middle of Duchamp’s painting is a Tarot of tincture, prescient of how things could eventually appear in an ideal world, not as they actually are. Though Duchamp’s tiles are merely a prophecy of hue, they seem somehow more real and urgent in his painting than the shadowy shapes of the hat stand, bicycle wheel, and corkscrew whose space they intersect cosmically, as if from another universe.

The years and decades that followed Duchamp’s final painting witnessed a succession of works by modern and contemporary artists that wrestle with and absorb the implications of his mischievous slicing of the mere idea of colour from the fact of physical form. Where proponents of colour theories of the 19th Century, such as those by the German Romantic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and by the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, are concerned with how colours are perceived by the human retina, the disciples of Duchamp became obsessed instead with colour as a commercialised concept – a pigment of their imagination.

At the same moment that descendants of post-Impressionism and the early pioneers of Expressionism were formulating quasi-scientific manifestos for how colour functions in the eyes of those who encounter their work, Duchamp was laying his new-fangled cards on the table: colour is an aspirational commodity – a property to be found, not an emotion to be felt.

Titians of industry

Suddenly, two philosophies of colour found themselves competing for artistic regard – one that understood it as a traditional tool of the craftsman to be soulfully mastered, the other that saw it as an artificial aspect of soullessly manufactured goods. That clash of sensibilities was perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the near-simultaneous appearance in 1963 of two very different kinds of publication. It was the year that the German-born American artist Josef Albers released his still-influential visual treatise, Interaction of Colour, which provides complex ruminations on the harmony of hues – a system that continues to be taught to this day. It is also the year that Pantone published its encyclopaedic compendium of subtle shades – a volume that appeared to prove the dominion of industry over the empire of conceivable colours.

The sway over artistic imagination in the 20th Century of the Pantone colour-matching system, and its precursors in the pigment charts distributed by companies such as DuPont, is impossible to overstate. Their influence can be traced in the works of generations of artists from Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst, Ellsworth Kelly to Gerhard Richter. But if Duchamp’s echelon of mechanical colour stretches prophetically forward in time to the obsessions of everyone from the Pop Artists to the YBAs, it also stretches back in history to the preoccupations of one of the most extraordinary, and extraordinarily neglected, books ever created.

Long forgotten until its rediscovery in recent years by Medieval and Renaissance scholars, Klaer lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst is an 800-page handwritten and hand-illustrated volume from 1692 that seeks not only to illustrate every conceivable shade of watercolour possible, but to explain how to create them. An obsessive-compulsive recipe book for concocting the subtlest variations of tint, the book is the brainchild, according to the title page, of ‘A. Boogert’ – a Dutch hustler of hues about whom nothing else is known.

Boogert’s book, which the inscrutable author says was intended to assist artists, came to the attention by accident of a Dutch Medievalist and blogger who was conducting research on the online databases of the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 2014. Erik Kwakkel’s decision to feature the vibrant volume on his popular scholarly blog, and to provide links to a high-resolution scan of the entire book, helped propel the lexicon of luminosity into wider recognition than the single-surviving copy could ever have enjoyed in the author’s own lifetime.

To click through the digitised pages of the book and watch the hundreds of abutting tiles flick into a shuffled blur of calibrated colour is to find oneself enacting the geometric drama of Duchamp’s pivotal final painting. Speaking to each other across centuries, Boogert’s long-lost opus maximum and Duchamp’s underappreciated prophetic masterpiece reveal a perennial fascination with the mysterious disguises of life’s most elusive dimension: colour.

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The insect that painted Europe red

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180202-the-insect-that-painted-europe-red, today

Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico. Devon Van Houten Maldonado reveals how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status.

Although scarlet is the colour of sin in the Old Testament, the ancient world’s elite was thirsty for red, a symbol of wealth and status. They spent fantastic sums searching for ever more vibrant hues, until Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered an intoxicatingly saturated pigment in the great markets of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. Made from the crushed-up cochineal insect, the mysterious dye launched Spain toward its eventual role as an economic superpower and became one of the New World’s primary exports, as a red craze descended on Europe. An exhibition at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes museum reveals the far-reaching impact of the pigment through art history, from the renaissance to modernism.

In medieval and classical Europe, artisans and traders tripped over each other in search of durable saturated colors and – in turn – wealth, amid swathes of weak and watery fabrics. Dyers guilds guarded their secrets closely and performed seemingly magical feats of alchemy to fix colours to wool, silk and cotton. They used roots and resins to create satisfactory yellows, greens and blues. The murex snail was crushed into a dye to create imperial purple cloth worth more than its weight in gold. But truly vibrant red remained elusive.

For many years, the most common red in Europe came from the Ottoman Empire, where the ‘Turkey red’ process used the root of the rubia plant. European dyers tried desperately to reproduce the results from the East, but succeeded only partially, as the Ottoman process took months and involved a pestilent mix of cow dung, rancid olive oil and bullocks’ blood, according to Amy Butler Greenfield in her book, A Perfect Red.

Dyers also used Brazilwood, lac and lichens, but the resulting colours were usually underwhelming, and the processes often resulted in brownish or orange reds that faded quickly. For royalty and elite, St John’s Blood and Armenian red (dating back as far as the 8th Century BCE, according to Butler Greenfield), created the most vibrant saturated reds available in Europe until the 16th Century. But, made from different varieties of Porphyrophora root parasites, their production was laborious and availability was scarce, even at the highest prices.

Mesoamerican peoples in southern Mexico had started using the cochineal bug as early as 2000 BCE, long before the arrival of the conquistadors, according to Mexican textile expert Quetzalina Sanchez. Indigenous people in Puebla, Tlaxcala and Oaxaca had systems for breeding and engineering the cochineal bugs for ideal traits and the pigment was used to create paints for codices and murals, to dye cloth and feathers, and even as medicine.

Cochineal in the New World

When the conquistadors arrived in Mexico City, the headquarters of the Aztec empire, the red colour was everywhere. Outlying villages paid dues to their Aztec rulers in kilos of cochineal and rolls of blood-red cloth. “Scarlet is the colour of blood and the grana from cochineal achieved that [...] the colour always had a meaning, sometimes magic other times religious,” Sanchez told the BBC.

Cortés immediately recognized the riches of Mexico, which he related in several letters to King Charles V. “I shall speak of some of the things I have seen, which although badly described, I know very well will cause such wonder that they will hardly be believed, because even we who see them here with our own eyes are unable to comprehend their reality,” wrote Cortés to the king. About the great marketplace of Tenochtitlan, which was “twice as large as that of Salamanca," he wrote, “They also sell skeins of different kinds of spun cotton in all colours, so that it seems quite like one of the silk markets of Granada, although it is on a greater scale; also as many different colours for painters as can be found in Spain and of as excellent hues.”

First-hand accounts indicate that Cortés wasn’t overly smitten with cochineal, more concerned instead with plundering gold and silver. Back in Spain, the king was pressed to make ends meet and hold together his enormous dominion in relative peace, so, although he was at first unconvinced by the promise of America, he became fascinated by the exotic tales and saw in cochineal an opportunity to prop up the crown’s coffers. By 1523, cochineal pigment made its way back to Spain and caught the attention of the king who wrote to Cortés about exporting the dyestuff back to Europe, writes Butler.

“Through absurd laws and decrees [the Spanish] monopolised the grana trade,” says Sanchez. “They obligated the indians to produce as much as possible.” The native Mesoamericans who specialised in the production of the pigment and weren’t killed by disease or slaughtered during the conquest were paid pennies on the dollar – while the Spaniards “profited enormously as intermediaries.”

Red in art history

Dye from the cochineal bug was ten times as potent as St John’s Blood and produced 30 times more dye per ounce than Armenian red, according to Butler. So when European dyers began to experiment with the pigment, they were delighted by its potential. Most importantly, it was the brightest and most saturated red they had ever seen. By the middle of the 16th Century it was being used across Europe, and by the 1570s it had become one of the most profitable trades in Europe – growing from a meagre “50,000 pounds of cochineal in 1557 to over 150,000 pounds in 1574,” writes Butler.

In the Mexican Red exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the introduction of cochineal red to the European palette is illustrated in baroque paintings from the beginning of the 17th Century, after the pigment was already a booming industry across Europe and the world. Works by baroque painters like Cristóbal de Villalpando and Luis Juárez, father of José Juárez, who worked their entire lives in Mexico (New Spain), hang alongside the Spanish-born Sebastián López de Arteaga and the likes of Peter Paul Rubens.

López de Arteaga’s undated work The Incredulity of Saint Thomas pales in comparison to Caravaggio’s version of the same work, where St Thomas’s consternation and amazement is palpable in the skin of his furrowed forehead. But the red smock worn by Christ in López de Arteaga’s painting, denoting his holiness, absolutely pops off the canvas. Both artists employed cochineal, the introduction of which helped to establish the dramatic contrast that characterised the baroque style.

A few steps away, a portrait of Isabella Brandt (1610) by Rubens shows the versatility of paint made from cochineal. The wall behind the woman is depicted in a deep, glowing red, from which she emerges within a slight aura of light. The bible in her hand was also rendered in exquisite detail from cochineal red in Rubens’ unmistakable mastery of his brush, which makes his subjects feel as alive as if they were in front of you.

Moving forward toward modernism – it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th Century that cochineal was replaced by synthetic alternatives as the pre-eminent red dyestuff in the world – impressionist painters continued to make use of the heavenly red hues imported from Mexico. At the Palacio de Bellas Artes, works by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh have all been analysed and tested positive for cochineal. Like Rubens, Renoir’s subjects seem to be alive on the canvas, but as an impressionist his portraits dissolved into energetic abstractions. Gauguin also used colour, especially red, to create playful accents, but neither compared to the saturation achieved by Van Gogh. His piece, The Bedroom (1888), on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, puts a full stop on the exhibition with a single burning-hot spot of bright red.

After synthetic pigments became popular, outside of Mexico, the red dye was mass-produced as industrial food colouring – its main use today. Yet while the newly independent Mexico no longer controlled the valuable monopoly on cochineal, it also got something back – the sacred red that had been plundered and proliferated by the Spanish. “In Europe, as has happened in many cases, the history of the original people of Mexico has mattered very little,” Sanchez told the BBC, but in Mexico “the colour continues to be associated with ancestral magic [and] protects those who wear attire dyed with cochineal.”

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'An unmistakable stab at the USSR': Could Amadeus be the most misunderstood Oscar winner ever?

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240926-could-amadeus-be-the-most-misunderstood-oscar-winner-ever, today

Released 40 years ago this month, Miloš Forman's best picture-winning Amadeus is often accused of historical inaccuracies – but the film's critics could be missing the point.

When it premiered 40 years ago, Amadeus drew an initial wave of praise. A historical drama revolving around the rivalry between two composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, it went on to win eight Oscars, including for best picture. Miloš Forman took home the best director prize, Peter Shaffer won for best adapted screenplay and both of the lead actors were nominated: F Murray Abraham, who played Salieri, beat Tom Hulce, who played Mozart.

But in the years that followed, a backlash grew over what some people saw as Amadeus's litany of historical errors. An article in The Guardian declared that "the fart jokes can't conceal how laughably wrong this is", and the BBC commented that "the film plays shamelessly fast and loose with historical fact". Salieri, critics noted, was no pious bachelor (as attested by his wife, eight children and mistress), and it's after all an odd kind of hateful rivalry when the real Mozart entrusted the musical education of his own son to Salieri. As for Mozart's lewd humor, that cheeky insouciance was actually commonplace in middle-class Viennese society. Most egregiously of all, world-famous Mozart was not dumped in an unmarked pauper's grave. If this is a homage to history, the complaint goes, it's akin to Emperor Joseph II fumbling ineptly on the pianoforte and bungling every other note.

But this kind of cavilling may be missing the point. Forman's aim for Amadeus can be seen as radically different from a typical biopic, and that was to use a fictionalised version of an epic clash between musical composers to allegorise the defining global rivalry of the mid-to-late 20th Century: the Cold War. Put simply, the film may have played fast and loose with 1784 because its real preoccupation was 1984.

The film opens in Vienna in 1823. Grizzled court composer Salieri howls through a bolted chamber door that he has murdered Mozart, then slashes his own throat. Days later, as he convalesces in an asylum, a priest arrives to hear his confession. It doesn't disappoint. Salieri recounts that as boy he made a vow of chastity to God as an expression of gratitude for, as he sees it, ushering in the providential death of his father to clear the path for his musical development.

Jump ahead some years, and Salieri is now an eminent composer in the court of Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), where he eagerly awaits an introduction to musical prodigy Mozart. That eagerness curdles when he sees the man in the flesh – he turns out to be a lascivious vulgarian with an ear-splitting cackle. Convinced that God means to mock his own mediocrity, Salieri hurls a crucifix in the fire and vows retaliation. When Mozart's father dies, Salieri seizes on the misfortune with a dastardly stratagem: dupe Mozart into believing that his father has risen from the grave to commission him to write a requiem, then murder him and pass off the masterpiece as his own. Mozart, feverish and besotted with drink, dies, leaving Salieri addled with bitterness and destined for obscurity.

The premise wasn't original to Forman. Drawing inspiration from Alexander Pushkin's taut 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, Peter Shaffer wrote a highly stylised play called Amadeus, which premiered in London in 1979. Forman, sitting in on a preview, was entranced by the dramatic rivalry and convinced Shaffer to collaborate with him, not merely to adapt the play for the screen but to "demolish the original, then totally reimagine it as a film". Across four irascible months cloistered in a Connecticut farmhouse with Shaffer, Forman fundamentally rebuilt the narrative with a fresh palette of political resonances.

The casting process for the coveted roles of Mozart and Salieri rivaled Gone with the Wind in scope and behind-the-scenes intrigue, all of which played out over a year and involved meetings with literally thousands of actors. Kenneth Branagh was nearly victorious in landing Mozart, then got dropped from consideration when Forman pivoted to a US cast. Mark Hamill endured grueling hours of auditions, only to be told by Forman: "No one is believing that the Luke Skywalker is the Mozart." Al Pacino lobbied hard for the part of Salieri, in competition with Mick Jagger, Burt Reynolds, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterson. In the end, Forman eschewed splashy celebrities for Hulce and Abraham, only to have casting drama explode again when Meg Tilly, slated to play Mozart's wife, Constanze, broke her ankle playing football: she was replaced by Elizabeth Berridge a week before shooting was to commence. With the plot rebuilt and the cast in place, more than one rivalry was poised to come into focus.

The triumph of genius

The Czech-born Forman had been a galvanising force behind the Czechoslovakian New Wave film movement in the 1960s, reaching a climax with his 1967 film The Firemen's Ball, which satirised the absurd inefficiencies of Eastern European communism. The film was initially warmly received within the reformist milieu of the Prague Spring, but when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague the following year and organised Czechoslovakia into the Eastern bloc, Forman, tarred as a "traitor" to the state, was forced to flee to the West and found refuge in the US.

Nearly all of Forman's film work thereafter would show glimmers of opposition to Soviet-style censorship, confinement, and concentrated power. His first success in the US, for example, 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, depicted a mental health ward meting out cruelty and coercion to patients under the guise of benevolent care. Audiences barely needed to squint to see the asylum as gulag and Nurse Ratched as the embodiment of the drunk-on-power Soviet bureaucrat. Likewise, Forman's 1996 film, The People vs Larry Flynt, depicted the founder of Hustler magazine squaring off against censorship at the cost of being jailed, locked up at a psychiatric facility and paralysed by an assassin's bullet.

The Soviet allegory can certainly be applied to Amadeus. Perhaps Forman was less concerned with hewing to biographical facts as he was with presenting Mozart as a beleaguered type of ecstatic genius who, hostage to patronage, is stifled and finally crushed by the repressive apparatus of the state. Joseph II, absolute ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, is advised at court by a clutch of prudish sycophants who undermine Mozart's achievements and smear his reputation. Whatever its loose correspondence to the late-18th and early-19th Centuries, this critique can be read as a stab at the USSR – a debilitatingly centralised bureaucracy hostile to insurgent ideas and innovation. But Forman showed that Mozart would get the last laugh. By the events of 1823, Salieri's insipid, state-sponsored melodies have all been forgotten, while a few bars of Mozart draw immediate joy to the priest's face. In the free market of popular tastes, Salieri's mandated drivel has been suffocated by the triumph of genius.

In Forman's hands, the Habsburg Empire bears the hallmarks of Soviet power. The masquerade balls, with their bewildering swirl of masked identities, conjure the confusion and paranoia that proliferated under the Soviet system. Salieri's reluctant servant-spy (Cynthia Nixon) carries out covert surveillance, a nod to the 20th Century's KGB, which had thousands of its moles burrow into the private lives of artists and dissidents. Meanwhile, Salieri's heretical burning of the crucifix and war on God call to mind the ideological struggle between a Christian worldview and secular Soviet hubris. (After Abraham's mother – a pious Italian woman – saw the cross-burning scene, she browbeat her son so relentlessly that he blurted out what he now tells the BBC was a lie: "I told her, 'mum, that was an extra – somebody else threw it in there!'")

And then there's the mass grave into which Mozart's corpse is dumped. This depiction does not fit the facts of what is known about his death, but it makes sense if read as an indictment of Soviet practices – the effacement of individual identity and literal mass murder. Grim excavations of these pits continue to this day. Forman, whose own parents perished in Nazi concentration camps, understood the power of this imagery.

Jeff Smith, author of Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist, tells the BBC that Mozart's struggle against the status quo tapped into Forman's own frustrations with Soviet censorship. "The emperor's fatuous judgment about Mozart's opera – 'too many notes' – is just the kind of accusation that was used as a cudgel used against avant-garde artists and thinkers to imply their work isn't pleasant or edifying to Soviet ears. Mozart's enraged incredulity in that scene must have mirrored Forman's own longstanding contempt for Soviet stagnation and repression."

Amadeus behind the Iron Curtain

Shooting took place in 1983 over a six-month period in Prague, which had the virtue of offering basilicas, palaces and cobblestone squares virtually unchanged since the late 18th Century. Even with Soviet power waning, however, Czechoslovakia remained part of the Eastern bloc and Forman was still persona non grata, so a deal was struck: the director would refrain from meeting with political dissidents, and the regime would allow friends of Forman to visit with their repatriated prodigal son.

Forman's own recollections from the shoot centred on the travails of Soviet interference. His landlady warned his phone is bugged. Informers lurked in every room. Two unmarked cars tailed him everywhere, which seemed redundant since his own driver was also a secret agent. In his autobiography, Turnaround, Forman is just shy of explicit about the degree to which themes of Soviet repression leaked into Amadeus. "As it had to be in the socialist Prague," he wrote, "the spirit of Franz Kafka presided over our production".

 

Perhaps even more telling is a story he recounts of negotiating with the general director of Czechoslovak film, Jiří Purš, who, as Forman recounted, wanted absolute assurance that the Communist Party would have nothing to fear: "I assume that politically there is nothing in the script that they could hang their hats on?" Forman's reply is a model of plausible deniability and acid irony: "Look, it's about Mozart!"

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F Murray Abraham felt the strain of coercive scrutiny as he was traveling back and forth to the United States to shoot his role in Scarface (1983) while Amadeus was in production in Prague.

Abraham tells the BBC, "At the end of every shooting day I had to cross the border to get to the airport in Vienna to return to Hollywood. At the checkpoint, the Czechoslovak Police would make us sit idle at the gate, just as a way to throw their weight around, make you know who's in charge. That sense of bullying and intimidation was everywhere, and even when the Czech people responded with subversive humor, the strain was palpable. We never forgot for a minute that we were under communist surveillance."

That tension between the US crew and Soviet agents finally burst out into the open on 4 July. The production was shooting an opera scene, and the crew arranged so that when Forman yelled "action" a US flag unfurled and the national anthem played in lieu of Mozart's music. Some 500 Czech extras burst forth into emotional song, in effect revealing their sympathies with the West. But not all of them.

Forman recalled, "All stood up – except 30 men and women, panic on their face, looking at each other [asking] what they should do. They were the secret police, dispersed among the extras."

As Amadeus continues to be reassessed at its 40th anniversary, the significance of the Cold War looms ever larger. Paul Frazier, author of The Cold War on Film, tells the BBC that the film brilliantly tapped into a deep vein of Soviet envy: "Salieri is the Soviet Lada trying to be a Ford Mustang. He can't be as great as Mozart, so he resorts to undermining and manipulating him. This too was the approach of the old USSR towards the West: rather than being better than the West, the Soviets resorted to undermining and discrediting the West at every turn."

Historian Nicholas J Cull echoes that analysis. "Think of the Jonathan Swift line: 'When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.' Whether it's the 1780s or 1980s, what you have is true genius facing off against mediocre, conniving bureaucrats. You see this same dynamic at play in a Cold War film like last summer's Oppenheimer, which in some ways is Amadeus with A-bombs. It makes sense that refugee film-makers like Forman and his creative team would be drawn to tell an allegory of communist mismanagement."

Not everyone is sold on the idea that Amadeus wrestles with Soviet totalitarianism. Kevin Hagopian, a media studies professor at Penn State University, says there's a risk of allegorising everything as an unseen Soviet menace, which ends up making art a mere handmaid to politics.

"That ultimately becomes a depressingly narrow way to appreciate the dazzling beauty and emotional breadth of Mozart's music," Hagopian tells the BBC. Nevertheless, he adds, we can't ignore the political resonances. 

"The allegorical space that satirical Czech film-makers like Forman opened up meant that audiences began to look for, even perhaps invent, allegorical political meaning," he says. "All films could be read against the grain of a regime that lacked not only humanity but any sense of irony about itself. So if Amadeus wasn't really about Soviet-style tyranny, but audiences merely thought it was, well, I have a feeling that would be just fine with Miloš Forman."

For his part, Abraham is candid about what he believes are the more contemporary political stakes of the film, as he told the BBC in June. "Think about how many Americans now idolise Putin. These autocrats are suddenly celebrated again. It's disheartening, truly demoralising, but if Amadeus can help us see our current predicament through fresh eyes, that shows you how powerfully its message still resonates."

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Paul McCartney's missing bass and other mysterious musical instrument disappearances

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240219-paul-mccartney-bass-missing-famous-stolen-musical-instruments, today

From a 17th-Century Italian violin stolen from Japan to Drake's lost Blackberry in Mexico, here are musical lost and found mysteries that rival Sir Paul McCartney's.

In musical happy endings, last week, Sir Paul McCartney was reunited with his bass guitar that was stolen 51 years ago in London. The instrument, which McCartney purchased in 1961, was subsequently nabbed from a band van in 1972. Now, thanks to the Lost Bass search project, the Beatle has been reunited with the bass, which had been until recently stashed in a Sussex attic. Both McCartney and Höfner, the instrument manufacturer, authenticated the found item upon its rediscovery, and a spokesperson for McCartney told BBC News he was "incredibly grateful" for the return of his lost guitar. 

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But McCartney certainly isn't the only musician to lose a valuable piece of his kit – in fact, he's not even the only Beatle. And for non-Beatles-level musical acts, the loss of an instrument – or worse, an entire kit – can be devastating. The BBC previously reported on the theft of rock band Cemetery Sun's entire kit and van, as well as trio Noisy's stolen kit reappearing with individual instruments and pieces of gear up for auction online weeks later.

Bassist Grant Emerson of Americana band Delta Rae recalls having around $10,000 (£7,937) of musical instruments stolen: "We played at the Bitter End in New York City and parked our van down the street. When we came back to the van, the back door had been broken into, and all of our guitars were gone, plus a pedal board and a piece of the drummer's equipment. Probably four to five pieces of gear were stolen. It was a really terrible drive back to North Carolina." He notes that for most bands, the only recourse is fundraising: "You just rely on your fans. You ask for help and donations, which isn't easy." And he urges all musicians to "photograph the serial number of every instrument and piece of gear you own".

Lost or stolen instruments over the years have kept musicians and fans alike searching for guitars, violins, and even an entire brass band. Here are a few more musical mysteries – some of which remain unsolved to this day. 

BB King

The famous blues legend was known for riffs on his legendary guitar, a Gibson he named Lucille – in fact, King had multiple performance guitars named Lucille over the course of his career. The name was inspired by a lover’s quarrel King witnessed in 1949 (the woman arguing was named Lucille, and she left quite an impression on King). When this particular Lucille guitar was stolen, it was eventually found in a Las Vegas pawn shop by Eric Dahl, a fellow musician who mistakenly purchased the guitar and later returned it to King. Dahl offered it without compensation and went on to write a book about King and his many guitars. The Gibson also ended up being one of the last instruments King played before his death in 2015, and it was subsequently sold at his estate auction for $280,000 (£222,286) in 2019. 

Eric Clapton

Clapton's Gibson Les Paul guitar, named Beano, was stolen soon after his studio album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton was released in 1966. Unlike King, Clapton hasn't been so lucky as to be reunited with his lost guitar – yet. But singer-songwriter Joe Bonamassa has claimed he knows where it is: In 2016, Bonamassa gave an interview in which he said the guitar was in a private US collection, which spurred a 2018 petition to encourage Bonamassa to reveal more details. On their YouTube channel, music aficionados Baxter and Jonathan of North Carolina-based Casino Guitars joked that they imagine a "guitar illuminati" trading in lost and rare instruments might not be pleased with what Bonamassa has already shared so far – and pondered whether he has a responsibility to help Clapton retrieve the stolen item if he does, in fact, know where it is. 

Takiko Omura

A violin made in 1675 by Nicolo Amati in Italy was stolen in 2005 from the home of Japanese violinist Takiko Omura, who had purchased the instrument in the United States many decades earlier. The violin, which was priced at nearly £300,000 ($377,895) in 2005 when it was taken, was reportedly found in 2020 in Parma, Italy, in the raid of a home of a suspected drug trafficker. Authorities in Italy and Japan worked together to return the instrument to its rightful owner. 

Stooges Brass Brand

It's difficult enough to find one lost guitar, let alone an entire brass band. In 2022, a famous local New Orleans "second line" brass band had all their equipment stolen from their van during the worst possible time for them – two weeks before New Orleans Jazz Fest. Nearly $12,000 (£9,526) in musical instruments, including cymbals, drum sets, keyboards and amps, were stolen when the band's van disappeared from outside the home of a band member. The theft threatened to derail the Stooges' festival appearance that year, but the band is back on its feet, with a scheduled appearance on 28 April at this year's Jazz Fest.

Min Kym

As the BBC has previously reported, the violin prodigy Min Kym's Stradivarius was stolen in 2010 from a Pret a Manger restaurant. This was no ordinary violinist and no ordinary violin: At just seven years old, Kym had earned a slot at the prestigious Purcell School of Music in the UK, and at age 11, she won first prize at the Premier Mozart International Competition. When presented with the opportunity to own a rare 1696 Stradivarius, "Kym remortgaged her flat and bought the violin for £450,000 ($580,000). If this seems like an astronomical amount of money, it was in fact a steal in Stradivarius terms: the violin's actual worth was closer to £1.2m ($1.5m) and these instruments are so precious that their value only ever goes up,” reads the 2017 article about the crime. Although the stolen violin was eventually recovered three years later, it was not returned to Kym, and her memoir, Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unstrung, tells the story of coping with a musical instrument being lost and found and then lost again.

George Harrison

Sir Paul wasn't even the only Beatle whose beloved instrument was absconded with: George Harrison's 1965 Rickenbacker guitar was allegedly stolen in 1966. Rickenbacker CEO John Hall told Reverb that the guitar's mystery has been so longstanding because "no one knows the exact serial number of the original guitar." The Rickenbacker team were, however, able to narrow the list down to five potential guitars based on shipment dates. 

Harrison also had his '57 Les Paul, Lucy – which was formerly owned by the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, Rick Derringer, and Eric Clapton – stolen. It was nabbed from Harrison's home during a burglary in 1973 and then sold to a Los Angeles music store who, in turn, sold it to Mexican musician Miguel Ochoa, who declined to sell it back to Harrison at full price. Instead, Ochoa negotiated a trade with Harrison: Harrison got Lucy back, and Ochoa would get a 1958 Les Paul Standard and a Fender Precision bass. 

Drake

In his 2009 song Say What's Real, produced by Kanye West, Drake revealed that he lost some of his best lyrics in Mexico: "Lost some of my hottest verses down in Cabo/So if you find a Blackberry with the side scroll," he raps, followed by an expletive-laden line that finishes the rhyme. For his genre of music, that Blackberry was his instrument, which he used to pen his songs. While it doesn't sound like it's ever been returned, Drake has probably upgraded his tech.

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How opera is aiming for net zero amid worsening climate change

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230731-how-opera-is-aiming-for-net-zero-amid-the-climate-crisis, today

Many opera companies are working towards full sustainability, and Glyndebourne is among those aiming to be a force for good, according to a new documentary.

A night at the opera is not typically equated with restraint, instead conjuring images of chandelier-filled theatres and arias performed in exquisite costumes against transportative stage sets. Yet, recent years have seen opera companies across the globe make a determined effort to operate more sustainably, implementing numerous strategies in a bid to reduce their carbon emissions and overall impact on the planet.

More like this:

-          How opera can be 'open to everyone'

-          The nation that is the 'land of song'

-          Gen Z and millennials' surprising obsession

This is, in part, the result of climate activists, who have increasingly targeted the arts and entertainment industries over the past few years with the aim of drawing greater attention to their cause. At the end of 2022, for instance, responding to mounting protests, the Royal Opera House cut ties with its long-time sponsor, the oil giant BP. Yet, it is also a response to the shifting expectations of audience members: according to a UK study conducted in 2022, 77% of audience members now expect theatres to address the climate emergency in their work – and opera houses are no exception.

The pandemic, while posing innumerable difficulties for the live entertainment industry, also offered an important pause for reflection. It was during this time that a number of UK theatre-makers joined forces with sustainability experts to conceive the Theatre Green Book, a publication setting a common standard for sustainable theatre production, and providing guidance on how best to achieve it. Divided into three volumes – sustainable productions, sustainable buildings and sustainable operations – spanning the many facets of what it means to run a theatre, the acclaimed guide has already been widely implemented.

A key collaborator in the creation of the Theatre Green Book was the historic East Sussex opera house Glyndebourne, renowned for its summer festival which draws thousands of opera lovers to the stately home's verdant grounds each year. Glyndebourne has been forging a path towards greater sustainability in opera for some time. "Art, opera, nature [has always been] a core trinity for Glyndebourne," explains its archivist Phil Boot in a new BBC documentary Take Me to The Opera: The Power of Glyndebourne.

 

In 2012, executive chairman Gus Christie oversaw the installation of a 67m (220ft)-tall wind turbine on a hill adjacent to the opera house, which between then and 2022 has generated the equivalent of 102% of the electricity used by the company in the same period. The turbine serves as an important statement of intent for Glyndebourne. Alison Tickell, the founder and chief executive of Julie's Bicycle, a non-profit organisation dedicated to mobilising the UK arts and culture sectors in a fight against climate change, says in the documentary: "I know that many opera companies… don't have the luxury of space. But [the turbine] still remains a beacon for us all [demonstrating] that climate action really matters."

Glyndebourne has innovated in sustainable practice in the years since. In 2021, it joined the global Race to Zero, pledging to halve its direct carbon emissions by 2030, and to reach net zero by 2050. "We are zero waste to landfill now, so any waste we have goes down to [an] incinerator, which provides power for local homes," Christie says of some of the measures he and his team have taken to achieve this. "We compost all our garden waste, we recycle as much of our stage-set material, costumes, props [as we can]. We have about 32 electric vehicle charging points [for visitors] which are all charged from the wind turbine." They are drawing from their resources in other ways, too: by the end of this year, they predict, all water served at Glyndebourne will come from the property's own natural spring, while plants grown in their gardens are being used to produce dyes for the company's costumes. "Rivers around the world are polluted by dyes a lot," says dye room supervisor Jenny Mercer in the documentary. "This way everything goes back into the ground."

Climate action

Glyndebourne isn't the only opera company taking steps towards sustainability. It is now usual among major opera houses, from the English National Opera to Opéra National de Paris, to boast a dedicated webpage outlining their sustainability mission statements, including pledges to adhere to the UN sustainable development goals, facts and figures relating to their reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions, and details of their own planet-friendly solutions.

The rooftop of the Opéra Bastille, for example, is host to an urban farm, cultivated using agroecology, which also contributes to the thermal insulation of the building. This produces around a hundred weekly baskets of fruit and vegetables that are then sold to staff and local residents.

The Sydney Opera House – a longstanding champion of environmental consciousness that achieved carbon neutrality in 2018 – has installed an artificial reef alongside the iconic building's sea wall, encouraging marine biodiversity and supporting Sydney Harbour's native species. Most recently, the opera house was awarded a six-star performance rating by the Green Building Council of Australia, the highest possible ranking. This is no mean feat given that perhaps the biggest challenge facing opera is achieving energy efficiency within its decades-, if not centuries-old, buildings. Indeed, in 2021, a survey by the UK's Theatres Trust found that it would cost more than £1bn ($1.2bn) to make the UK's theatre buildings sustainable.

In the meantime, many companies have been looking to achieve sustainability through new buildings, while doing what they can to reduce waste in their pre-existing spaces. The Royal Opera House's production workshop just outside London, built in 2015, is in the top 10% of sustainable non-domestic buildings in the UK. While Milan's storied opera house La Scala's new office is a zero-energy building, producing more energy than it consumes thanks to rooftop solar panels and an open-cycle geothermal system. La Scala has also cut its carbon emissions by more than  630 tonnes since 2010, according to a recent New York Times article, having upgraded to LED and smart lighting.

Elsewhere, the Opéra de Lyon, Göteborg Opera and Tunis Opera are currently partnered on a new project investigating how best to implement the circular economy of production materials, while Leeds' Opera North is soon to launch its first "green season", using shared set design across its three productions, recycled or second-hand costumes, and including a new "eco-entertainment" work titled Masque of Might.

As the Theatres Trust's study shows, there is still a long way to go, and a lot of money required, to make the changes necessary to safeguard the future of opera amid the ever-worsening climate crisis, but there appears to be no shortage of determination and imagination among opera houses in their quest to do so.

Take Me to the Opera: The Power of Glyndebourne is on BBC News Channel and on BBC Reel

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Antonio Pappano: How opera can be 'open to everyone'

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230728-antonio-pappano-how-opera-can-be-open-to-everyone, today

Is the world of opera becoming more inclusive? A new documentary, featuring conductor Antonio Pappano, explores the mission to open up the art form to everyone.

Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano is renowned for being a warm-hearted "people person". But there's one thing that makes his blood run cold: when he hears opera being accused of being an art form that's only for a wealthy elite. "I get very offended by people who say we're elitist," he says passionately in a new documentary. This is "a misconception that totally distorts the image of opera," he adds. "The fact of the matter is, it's harder to get into a football game in London than it is to get into the [Royal] Opera House."

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This allusion to the beautiful game is not a frivolous one. When Pappano  became music director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (ROH) in 2002, he spoke of his love for popular music by stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Joni Mitchell, and for musicals. "I like football too," he added. "Does that mean you can't like opera?"

Back then Pappano was 42, and the youngest conductor to lead ROH's orchestra. Some 700 operas later –  with many productions of the French and Italian repertoires; a good part of the Russian; Wagner, Strauss and contemporary works – and he is the subject of A Time of Change, presented by Zeinab Badawi, and part of the BBC documentary series Take Me to the Opera.

The documentary follows him from his modest roots, as the son of Italian immigrant parents who came from southern Italy to the UK, who worked hard to make ends meet.  They passed on their strong work ethic to him, and he learnt how to work with singers from his vocal coach father, flourishing as a musical talent in the "the family business". A Time of Change goes on to trace a career that includes assisting classical pianist Daniel Barenboim, through to a recent high, conducting the King's coronation service in May, featuring solos by Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel and South African soprano Pretty Yende.

The main focus of the film, though, is Pappano's mission to open up opera to everyone. "Opera shouldn't cater just to one audience, or be focused on just one corner of the repertoire," he says. "It must be open to the interests of many different people." While he asserts that the ROH, like every big opera house, wants to entice young audiences, he does concede: "I think you have to be honest and say, yes, but younger people can't afford very expensive tickets, can they?"  

It's true that the price of opera tickets can seem too high to be anything but a rare luxury for most, especially young people. Halley Bondy, writing on the arts website Paste Magazine, describes herself as someone who has been to the opera many times "for a millennial". And although she loves opera – "from the hyper-real grandness to the unbelievable talent, to the septuagenarian, fur-hatted audience" – she finds it "easy to see why places like The Met [Metropolitan Opera House in NYC] are ailing in sales; young people just don't go. It's too expensive, too arcane, too massive… The onus is on the opera houses to do a better job of catering to the young."

Bondy has only managed to attend so often by being treated by a "ridiculously generous friend" or chasing discounted tickets. "Like everything else in the world, the opera is a lot of fun if you have gobs of money," she observes, but she concedes anyone could get in with the $25 [£19.40] rush tickets, student tickets or commercial offers – which make it "affordable, if you just dig a little".    

In opera's defence, ticket prices are generally high because it is notoriously costly to produce. All the more reason, argued The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins in February, for adequate government funding. Discussing recent cuts to opera funding, she wrote: "If you starve something, run it down constantly, gradually reduce the provision of it so that few can afford it, it becomes 'elitist'… And if opera in the form that its creators imagine it becomes for toffs, that is nothing to do with opera itself… [it is] precisely the result of neglect and underfunding". 

Pappano is also invested in bringing new blood to opera, via schemes like the ROH's  schools matinees, which offer young people low-cost tickets to opera productions. Also, its Youth Opera talent development programme gives children aged seven to 13 the chance to try its "rigorous music and drama training".

"We make sure there's a real variety of socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities, and an even gender split,” says Tom Floyd, ROH senior opera manger, talking about its open recruitment system. Most of the young people who join them "come from families who probably have had no real experience of opera," he says.       

Opera for all

Over at English National Opera (ENO), the company has stayed true to its egalitarian roots of the late 19th-Century, when theatrical producer Lilian Baylis and music director Charles Corri shared a vision of it as a place for "people's opera". ENO has "opera for all" in its mission statement. It does not assume knowledge of opera; its website has  key figures of the organisation  explaining what opera is and how it's made; and  the site hints at how it skillfully reimagines crowd pleasers, like La Traviata (to be performed this October), in thrilling new ways, alongside daring new work, such as 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, by performance artist Marina Abramovich (November).   

"We sing in English to be accessible to the widest possible audience," an ENO spokesperson tells BBC Culture. The company offers free tickets for under-21s; discounts for under 35s, and tickets from £10 for all. No surprise, then, that more than half its bookings last season were from opera first-timers.

Still, in order to survive the cuts to Arts Council England (ACE) funding, the ENO will next year move its main base from the London Coliseum to outside the capital and in so doing will  qualify for £24m funding over three years.

Opera must change, ACE chief executive Darren Henley wrote in an article for The Guardian: "A new generation is embracing opera and music presented in new ways: opera in car parks… in pubs, opera on your tablet". In truth, most opera companies are not digital-age dodgers; they have presences on the popular digital platforms, while the hashtag #operaisopen invites new audiences to click through.  

Streaming services –  like Royal Opera Stream and Glyndebourne Encore – have dished up productions and events, both popular and esoteric, to reach a wider audience. And there's also opera at the cinema. At ROH, 2022/23 has been its biggest cinema season ever, with more than 1,300 cinemas worldwide having shown or showing 13 productions (opera and ballet), including Madam Butterfly, La Boheme and Aida. The latter, staged in May and June 2023, was conducted by Pappano.

Nurturing promising young talent – like soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha – is a passion of Pappano’s, and he's also a role model for young opera conductors, like Avishka Ederisinghe, who says that watching him talking on YouTube was what inspired him to explore the art form. 

As he steps down from his music director roles – at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome after 18 years, and at ROH next summer, after 22 years – Pappano is looking forward to change. He will not be hanging up the baton yet: he will succeed Simon Rattle to become chief conductor at the London Symphony Orchestra, his "dream job".  

He describes how he grew up in a council flat that was just "a four-minute walk to Westminster Abbey"; and that rising from his humble background to conducting the coronation at that same abbey was "not a bad gig". Jokes aside, there is a message there that  he'd love to hand down to a younger generation: "If you have a vision for what you want to achieve in life, that spark and… the energy and resilience to keep pushing when you know things will get tough, you can make it in any walk of life."  

Take me to the Opera: A Time of Change is on BBC News Channel and on BBC Reel

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Bryn Terfel: The nation that is the 'land of song'

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230607-bryn-terfel-why-wales-became-the-land-of-song, today

Opera star Bryn Terfel emerged from an extraordinary cultural heritage and a nation renowned for its love of singing. "It's the air that we breathe," he explains in a new documentary.

Sir Bryn Terfel is pondering a question: what is it about Wales and the Welsh that produces a nation of singers? "I think it's the mountains, and the fresh sea air. And the language – that is very important," he says. "Then there's the hymns… You know, we just love to sing – it's the air that we breathe."

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The Welsh bass-baritone is the subject of Peak Performance, part of the BBC documentary series Take Me to the Opera. Presented by Zeinab Badawi, it follows Sir Bryn – as he has been known since his knighthood in 2017 – from his operatic debut with the Welsh National Opera in 1990, to singing at opera houses across the world, like London's Royal Opera House, where he is a regular star performer. En route, the documentary revisits his roots in rural Wales and looks at how he's nurturing the next generations of singing talent, as well as his invitation to sing at King Charles's coronation.

Sir Bryn is high on the list of great living Welsh opera singers, which also includes luminaries such as Dame Gwyneth Jones, Wynne Evans, Katherine Jenkins, and Aled Jones. (Added to which there are many popular non-opera Welsh singers, including Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Bonnie Tyler, Charlotte Church and Cerys Matthews.) But beyond these headline stars lies a whole nation renowned for its love of singing, especially choral. So where does this passion for song stem from?

In A History of Music and Singing in Wales, novelist and poet Wyn Griffith, who wrote extensively on Wales and Welsh culture, observed: "If you find a score of Welsh people, in Wales or out of it, you will find a choir. They sing for their own delight, and they always sing in harmony. They sing as naturally and easily as they talk."

"Wales is known as a nation of music – the 'land of song'," notes the Welsh National Opera (WNO). "Often connected with male voice choirs, it is… recognised for its choral traditions which are rooted in the culture."

Choral singing in Wales dates back to the 19th Century, and flourished with the Cymanafa Ganu (hymn singing) movement, at a chapel in Aberdare in 1859; it was rooted mainly in religious songs, though a steady body of secular songs were also produced. Soon after, a revival of traditional Welsh music began with the formation of the National Eisteddfod Society, a focus for the Welsh passion for singing and song. Any worthy list of classic Welsh songs might include Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (O Land of My Fathers); My Little Welsh Home by William Sidney Gwynn Williams; and the love song Ar Lan y Mor (recorded by both Terfel and Jenkins). Or the rousing We'll Keep a Welcome (In the Hillsides).

The male voice choir, along with the harp, are two of the most popular signifiers of Welsh music. Professor Gareth Williams traces the male voice choir's origins to the mid-19th Century industrial age: "We are reminded of what Aneurin Bevan once said: 'Culture comes off the end of a pick'," he writes, referring to Welsh coal miners. Choirs started in the 1920s, like Cwbach from the Cynon Valley, and Pendyrus, survive today. After a day's hard graft in a mine, says Williams, the joy and community found in singing with co-workers was "an assertion of working-class male bonding and identity expressed through that most democratic and inexpensive instrument, the human voice".

The Welsh Borough Chapel in Southwark, London, is host to Eschoir, a Welsh male choir of around 20 singers, aged 20 to 75. Singing together since 2009, they've performed at Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street, and the Six Nations rugby tournament. Eschoir founder and director Mike Williams, who grew up in south Wales, describes their appeal: "There's a humility to it, as Welsh choirs stem back to the coal mines and chapels. Many people enjoy singing in the pub as much as singing in a concert. There is no pomp… it unites us and keeps us connected to our Welsh roots." And the Welsh take choirs very seriously, he adds.

In tandem with a passion for choral singing in Wales, there has been a rise in popularity of the Eisteddfod. These Welsh singing and recital competitions date back to the 12th Century and today are a platform for public singing, especially for younger singers. It was at local Eisteddfods that the young Bryn Terfel first stood out, winning singing competitions that would lead him to study at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and to his first professional role in Cosi Fan Tutti at Welsh National Opera, soon after graduating in 1989.

A unique cultural inheritance

In the documentary, Terfel recalls competing in Eisteddfods in his rural north Wales, and how his "parents paid for a lot of petrol to drive me north, south, east and west to compete. They saw something in their son… the passion, how I loved singing. I think that drove them to encourage the singing within me." Eisteddfods are "a wonderful shop window", he says. One of his charitable initiatives is a scholarship to develop promising young performers coming up through Eisteddfods. Peak Performance visits one in Llanadog, near Swansea, as young singers of all genders, from the area and across Wales, prepare to get on stage and sing. "This is where it all starts for us Welsh singers," says one teenage boy in the documentary. "This is where we learn our craft." He believes when Welsh singers go to London to study, "you can see the difference… they’ve got some sort of… confidence."

Certainly, Terfel was swaddled in song and music from the cradle. Born in 1967 in rural north Wales, his father was a farmer, his mother a special needs teacher who used music therapy in her work. The whole family, including older relatives, sang together and in choirs. "My grandfather, my great-grandfather, had the love of singing," he says. "There was constant learning going on in the kitchen, words on the cabinets. A little bit of rivalry as well, which is quite healthy."

Eilir Owen Griffiths, a composer and Eisteddfod adjudicator, explains what he looks for in a great singer: "It's how the voice resonates, and the way it works with text." He describes Terfil's voice as "like a beautiful double bass" – but it's not just the incredible sound he generates: "It's also the control he has – he can sing the most delicate pianissimo as well. It's a unique voice, very special." That quality – and cultural diversity – was drawn on when Sir Bryn sang at the coronation of King Charles, who personally chose him to perform; he sang Coronation Kyrie, a first in the Welsh language at a coronation. "You have the rehearsals in the rooms… Then you have your fittings, and all of a sudden you're in your costume and make-up." And you're onstage, he says, "portraying a character. And that's when the fun really does begin!"

The documentary joins Terfel as he goes through his repertoire for a week in March: as well as the Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House, he sings the title role in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool; then travels to a studio near Cardiff in Wales, to record an album of sea shanties – the likes of Drunken Sailor, and traditional folk songs like Fflat Huw Puw, "about a sailor and his wonderful ship".

It's a voice that continues to thrill audiences, whether in lead roles such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House; or Tosca by Puccini at Paris Opera Bastille; or Verdi's Falstaff, at Grange Park Opera, Surrey. As well as big opera houses, he performs for new audiences in concert halls too. Gillian Moore is artistic director of the South Bank Centre, where in recent months he sang extracts from two of Wagner's great roles: "The fact he's passing that on to young singers makes total sense… When he's on stage, you cannot take your eyes off him."

Returning to that question of why the Welsh love to sing, Wyn Griffith suggests it's about an irrepressible spirit – and it's simply in the blood: "Whether they meet in tens or in thousands, in a small country chapel or in a vast assembly… they sing freely… It is not necessary to organise singing in Wales: it happens on its own."

Take me to the Opera: Peak Performance is on BBC News Channel on 10 June at 13.30 and also on BBC Reel

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Gen Z and young millennials' surprising obsession

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230113-gen-z-and-young-millennials-surprising-obsession, today

A radical new wave of artists are sweeping the previously elite world of classical music – with a little help from Squid Game, Dark Academia and fashion. Daisy Woodward explores how classical got cool.

If asked to guess what under 25-year-olds are listening to, it's unlikely that many of us would land upon orchestral music. And yet a survey published in December 2022 by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) found that 74% of UK residents aged under 25 were likely to be tuning into just that at Christmas-time, compared with a mere 46% of people aged 55 or more. These figures reflect not only the RPO's broader finding that under 35-year-olds are more likely to listen to orchestral music than their parents, but also the widespread surge in popularity of classical music in general, particularly among younger generations.

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There are plenty of reasons for this, from the playlist culture spawned by streaming platforms that make it easy for listeners to discover new artists and types of music to fit their mood, to the solace it provided during the pandemic, not to mention the profusion of classical music in pop culture hits like Squid Game. But perhaps highest on the list is the global wave of Gen Z and young millennial classical artists who are finding new ways to be seen and heard, and – just as vitally – new means of modernising what has long been branded music's most elite and stuffy genre.

Unsurprisingly, social media has played a huge part in this, as a quick search of the popular TikTok hashtag "classictok" (currently at 53.8 million views) attests. There, as well as on Instagram, young classical artists have been making use of the digital realm's democratic potential to lift the heavy velvet curtains on their art form, presenting classical music and its storied history in ways that are accessible, unintimidating and, most importantly, fun.

For French violinist Esther Abrami – who has more than 250,000 followers on Instagram, more than 380,000 on TikTok, and was the first classical musician to be nominated in the Social Media Superstar category at the Global Awards – the journey to social media fame stemmed from a desire to share her passion more widely. "I was studying at a top institution and most of the time I was practising for exams, so the whole joy of sharing was taken away. Then, at the very few concerts I did play, there was a very specific type of audience that wasn't very diverse," Abrami tells BBC Culture.

She noticed that a handful of classical musicians had taken to Instagram to broaden their own reach, and decided to do the same. "I started posting a few things, and was stunned by the reaction that I got. Suddenly you have people from around the world listening to you and telling you it brightens their day to watch you playing the violin," she enthuses. "It opened this door to a completely new world."

Nigerian-US baritone and lifelong hip-hop fan Babatunde Akinboboye enjoyed a similarly swift and surprising rise to social media fame when he posted a video of himself singing Rossini's renowned aria Largo al factotum over the top of Kendrick Lamar's track Humble. "I was in my car and I realised that the two pieces worked together musically, so I started singing on top of the beat," he tells BBC Culture. He documented the moment on his phone and posted the video on his personal Facebook account, guessing that his friends would enjoy it more than his opera peers. "But I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and it had expanded to my opera network, and far beyond that," he laughs, explaining that within two days, his self-dubbed brand of "hip-hopera" had caught the attention of The Ellen Show, America's Got Talent and Time magazine.

Both Abrami and Akinboboye came to classical music in their teens, late by conventional standards, and cultivated their passion for the genre independently. This remains a driving factor in their desire to reach new audiences, which they've achieved on an impressive scale, largely just by being themselves. "I ended up becoming an opera influencer by sharing the parts of me I felt comfortable sharing, which is a lot," says Akinboboye, whose playful hip-hopera and opera videos and posts – taking viewers behind the scenes of a world still shrouded in mystery  – have garnered him some 688,000 TikTok followers. "It's a lot about how I relate to opera; my musical background was from hip-hop, but I still found a relationship with opera and that resonated with people," he explains. "Almost every day I get a different message saying, 'I went to my first opera today'. I think it's because they're seeing someone they feel comfortable or familiar with."

'Complex and profound'

Abrami, a similarly enthusiastic content creator, agrees: "I think putting the face of somebody not so far away from them to the genre is a big thing. That's what I'm trying to do, to reach different types of people and create bridges, to show them that this music can really move you. It's complex and profound and yes, it might take a bit of time to understand but once you do, it's amazing."

 

British concert pianist Harriet Stubbs is another avid proponent of classical music for modern audiences who has been finding her own ways of drawing in new listeners. During lockdown, the musician, who usually splits her time between London and New York, performed multiple 20-minute concerts from her ground-floor flat in West Kensington, opening the windows and using an amplifier to reach listeners outside. "I gave 250 concerts," Stubbs, who was awarded a British Empire Medal by the Queen for this mood-boosting act of service, tells BBC Culture. "I did a range of repertoire from my upcoming album, and also things like All By Myself, which I chose ironically for that audience. And the thing is, people who thought they didn't care for classical music came back every day because of the power of that music."

The fusion of classical music with other genres is a major facet of Stubbs's practice and, indeed, that of many others among the new generation of classical artists (see also the React to the K YouTube channel, where classical artists frequently reimagine K-pop songs with ingenious results, or Kris Bowers' brilliant orchestral arrangements of modern pop songs for the much-buzzed-about Bridgerton soundtrack). Stubbs's innovative first album, Heaven & Hell: The Doors of Perception (2018), was inspired by William Blake and features musical icon Marianne Faithfull. "I always wanted to tie rock'n'roll and classical music together and put them in the same space, supported by literature and philosophy and other disciplines," she explains, adding that her next album, which she's making with pianist and former Bowie collaborator Mike Garson, will be a "Bowie meets Rachmaninoff" affair.

Interestingly, the current swell of enthusiasm for classical music has branched out to become as much of an aesthetic movement as it is a musical one. Digital microtrends Dark Academia and Light Academia – dedicated as they are to the romanticisation of a passion for art and knowledge through imagery – both make rousing use of classical music in order to create the desired ambience. Ascendant Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, meanwhile, uses atmospheric visuals as a powerful means of contemporising the baroque experience. Depressed by the lack of funding for music video production in the classical realm, he drummed up private sponsorship to make a 21-minute movie to accompany his 2021 rendition of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater. The resulting film conjures a compelling and suitably brutal scenario for the haunting 18th-century hymn, which The New York Times describes as "resembling a Polish remake of The Sopranos".

"I'm really interested in storytelling. I always build an entire concept for my albums – the narrative, the photography, the videos," Orliński tells BBC Culture. "I think now there is this whole new generation of people who really want to add to what classical music can be, to go beyond the singing and be challenged. You just have to know that the end product will be good, and that what you're doing will serve the story," he adds. This is certainly something Orliński has achieved in his own career: an accomplished sportsman and breakdancer, he wowed critics with his 2022 Royal Opera House debut, which found him pole-dancing in a spangled dress as Didymus in Katie Mitchell's production of Handel's Theodora. Other recent projects have included recording baroque tracks for forthcoming video games which, he says, was "an incredible experience" and is something he's being asked to do more and more frequently, as the Metaverse beckons. "Sometimes you need classical music to touch the strings of somebody's soul – a pop song won't work."

Classical music's ongoing and often powerful intersection with pop culture is being foregrounded as part of the burgeoning interest in the genre, both inside and outside its famously guarded gates. The all-teen members of the UK's National Youth Orchestra have just completed a mini tour that included a performance of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, replete with its opening symphonic sunrise eternalised by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Last August saw the BBC Proms launch its first gaming-themed programme whereby the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra took on some of the best-loved songs in video game history. While the recent autumn/winter collection from Acne Studios' younger sub-label Face offered up one of the most direct sartorial tributes to classical music to date, presenting crew-neck sweaters, T-shirts and tote bags embellished with the faces of Handel, Mozart and Bach in celebration of "the idea that a passion for classical music is the most left-field move imaginable for a modern-day teenager".

Orliński agrees that classical music has achieved an "almost hipstery" status of late. "It's cool to go to the opera, to know something, and that's because there are a lot of young artists delivering music on the highest level, while making it very entertaining," he enthuses. There is, he observes, a revived interest in classical music personalities such as Maria Callas and Pavarotti, as well as "people like Yuja Wang" who are selling out concert halls, all of which he feels bodes well for the art form. "We have a long way to go to grow as much as other genres of music, but we're moving forward." Akinboboye, too, is tentatively hopeful. "I think opera is definitely being a lot more bold, and I hope that it continues because I think we can catch up," he concludes. "[Classical music needs to] be brave, to do the scary thing. And it'll work out, because audiences are ready."

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'Proper piece of Bristol history' up for auction

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxzkd4443o, today

A "proper piece of Bristol history" is expected to fetch thousands of pounds when it goes under the hammer this week.

The theatre token from 1766 is one of 50 originally gifted to the first shareholders of the Bristol Old Vic theatre, who helped fund its construction between 1764 and 1766.

The "incredibly rare" item allowed the owner unlimited access to shows and is set to go under the hammer at the Bristol-based Auctioneum on Thursday.

Auctioneer Andrew Stowe said only 20 of the silver tokens are known to still exist adding: "Every now and again, another token gets discovered and this is just one such of those newly discovered tokens."

Auctioneers have given it an estimated sale price of between £5,000 and £10,000.

Another of the tokens sold for £9,200 at a Wiltshire auction house last year, which at the time the Bristol Old Vic said could still be valid to the new owner.

The inscription on the token reads: "The proprietor of this ticket is entitled to the sight of every performance to be exhibited in this house."

The reverse side reads: "King Street Bristol Theatre, May 30, 1766."

Token No.31 belonged to shareholder Daniel Harson, but by 1816 the coin had found its way into the possession of another shareholder, John Palmer.

Records from 1925 show the coin was then passed to A. A. Levy-Langfield, wherein it stayed in the family until being purchased by its current owner in 2009.

Mr Stowe said: "The theatre on King Street went on to become the Old Vic, which went on to spawn the Old Vic Theatre School where some of the world's most famous actors trained.

"The knock-on story for both the history of Bristol and the wider world is just so, so special."

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How art saved actor from 'paralysing' depression

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzpw734wqo, today

Nitin Ganatra found lockdown hit him "like a slap in the face". It triggered a depression so deep it was almost like paralysis, the former EastEnders actor has said.

Best known for playing Masood Ahmed in the popular soap, he said he used his love for painting to help him cope.

Ganatra, who grew up in the family corner shop in Coventry, said he used to find solace from "daily violence and racism" in drawing.

He has now hosted his first exhibition of paintings.

'Falling in love with the younger me'

Ganatra said he had a childhood where he was beaten up to and from school, and even teachers used racist expressions and names.

"I literally shut down and focused on a piece of paper with a pen - pens were cheaper than pencils at the time.

"I would draw and paint relentlessly as a coping strategy".

The same strategy kicked into action during lockdown when his trauma resurfaced.

He picked up a paintbrush, an old sketchbook and paints he had since he was 10.

"It was an outpouring of work and stories and paintings and feelings and emotions.

"I would do a painting, finish it, put it in a box.

"But then I posted one on social media, and another and the reaction started to grow.

"And then suddenly it became a reality that I could possibly start being the person that I wanted to be.

"Going back to painting was like falling in love with the younger me again."

Ganatra had long harboured ambitions to paint, describing it as his "first love".

He told BBC London presenter Asad Ahmad he was 17 and on his way to a university interview when he happened to sit near an art dealer who looked at his portfolio.

His hopes were dashed: "He said 'you're never going to make it'.

"It broke me, so I decided to become an actor instead."

Ganatra worked on EastEnders for nine years, establishing the Ahmed family in the fictional borough of Walford alongside Nina Wadia who played his wife Zainab.

He believes it was a "brave move" to introduce a Muslim family to the show, and said he and Wadia took the opportunity to play a couple who were not stereotypical.

"What we didn't want, as actors, was to play safe.

"We were a lot more hands-on, we were very physically affectionate with each other, we were very naughty and a bit randy, you know.

"It seemed to open the doors - it didn't have to be conservative.

"And I think because we played with the drama and comedy of it, people warmed to us."

Fans have been keen to know if Ganatra will return to EastEnders - perhaps for the 40th anniversary in February?

"I get asked this every day, but as far as I know, but not as far as I know. I haven't had that phone call yet.

"But - never say never. I'll take my canvas with me."

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New theatre and concert venue moves step closer

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce89j4j3rnko, today

Plans for a new theatre and concert venue have moved a step closer.

Swindon Borough Council's cabinet meeting on Wednesday approved spending up to £40,000 on a specialist advisor.

Councillors also approved building the new venue at the current bus station, Kimmerfields, which is due to be cleared next year.

Councillor Jim Robbins, council leader, said: “I’m excited to be bringing this forward, this could be the first part of the Heart of Swindon vision to be delivered."

Although work is at an early stage, a construction method similar to the 3,000-capacity space Abba Voyage Arena in east London is a favoured option, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service

Known as a ‘modern construction’ the arena is modular, mostly built offsite and assembled in situ and can be demounted and moved elsewhere.

Councillor Marina Strinkovsky, cabinet member for culture, said: “This would be only the second completed ‘modern construction; outside of London.

"This is another sign that Swindon isn’t copying other places, it isn’t aspiring to be like somewhere else. This is a theatre for the post-Covid, post-Amazon, post-Doordash world.”

The Wyvern Theatre is nearing the end of its life and is expected to close by 2027. It is hoped that the new venue will open before then.

Councillor Gary Sumner - from the opposition Conservative group - was not at the meeting but later said: “While we support the principle, the LGA Peer review said the financial threat to the council could be existential.

“Is this the right moment to be heading into more borrowing for something which the private sector could deliver if it is so viable?" he added.

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The transgender bus driver in 1970s Belfast

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzxrl5ydro, today

Wilma Creith is believed to have been one of the first people from Northern Ireland to have undergone gender reassignment surgery back in 1980.

At the age of 47, she made the life-changing journey from Belfast to Leeds but died just three days later.

An inquest found she died as a result of a blood clot caused by high levels of oestrogen.

She made front page news in 1977, when a tabloid ran the headline "Call me Wilma, says bus driver Bill" and now her story has inspired a play.

Suspect Device is a new immersive play performed aboard a retro Ulsterbus stationed in the grounds of Belfast Castle.

Artistic director Paula McFetridge said dozens of people had got in touch to share stories about Wilma.

"She ferried children to and from school including St Columbanus in Bangor, and Sullivan Upper and Sacred Heart of Mary's in Holywood," she said.

Ms McFetridge said those who reached out spoke of the "stoic grace in the way she looked and in the way she handled people".

She added that those who spoke said people who confronted Wilma were "in the minority", although some remember school children being at times very aggressive.

'Humiliation and embarrassment'

Mariah Louca, who takes on the role of Wilma, said there were stories of the abuse Wilma was subjected to.

"A lot of horror stories came out of her time driving the buses," she said.

“That just makes me more in awe of her."

Wilma is remembered as a resilient and strong-willed figure,

However, associate director Colm Doran said the "humiliation and embarrassment must have been huge" when she appeared on the front page of the Sunday World in 1980.

Support from the boss

Wilma began driving buses after meeting the then head of Ulsterbus and Citybus, Werner Heubeck.

They met after Wilma, Bill as she was then, married with children carried out work as an electrician at Mr Heubeck’s home.

He later invited Wilma to begin driving.

When Wilma later told Mr Heubeck she wanted to live life as a woman, he provided her with a lot of support.

Ms McFetridge and her team heard from friends of Wilma that Mr Heubeck gave her sick pay for five weeks to allow her to travel to Leeds and allow her to recover from surgery.

She added: “He was even the first person to ring her after the operation.

“That level of support, because it came from the boss, meant that a lot of the bus drivers and a lot of those that were working in the unions, knew that they had to have respect for her and look out for her."

The eternal bus driver

The production attempts to immortalise Wilma by evoking Greek mythology about the River Styx, which separated the land of the living, from the land where dead souls resided.

The audience sits amongst the cast aboard the vintage Ulsterbus.

Ms McFetridge describes Wilma’s character as “the eternal bus driver taking a bus of souls to the other side of the River Styx, in this case the River Lagan.”

"It's a promenade production," said Ms Louca.

"You’re walking up and down the aisle and they really are part of the story. They’re on the bus journey with you.

"They get to go on Wilma's ride with her".

Suspect Device runs until 1 December 2024 at Belfast Castle. It's produced by Kabosh Theatre Company as part of Belfast 2024 and the Outburst Arts Festival.


London becomes Emerald City for Wicked premiere

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5ldeyqleo, today

London's South Bank has been transformed into the Emerald City for the European premiere of Wicked.

Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Jeff Goldblum were among the cast to brave the rainy weather.

The film is an adaptation of the stage musical which tells the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.

Like the Barbie press tour last year, the cast have been method dressing - wearing colours similar to their character in the film.

Wicked was filmed in the UK and the cast told the BBC they were excited to be in the capital for the premiere, with Cynthia Erivo, who plays the green witch Elphaba, saying "she's finally back home".

Her co-star Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda, said the south London actress had helped her improve her British accent while filming.

Both of them said they were "excited" that stories about witches are having a resurgence and "people really need a sisterhood and community".

The film explores the complex friendship that evolves between the two witches at Shiz University.

Michelle Yeoh, who plays Madame Morrible, admitted to not having seen the musical until she was cast in the film.

"I had never seen it and when I found out it was a musical I thought this is wrong because I can't sing."

Having seen the musical after being cast she said she "understood the hype".

"There's a certain universality to the story - I saw old people, young people, women and men and everyone loves it.

"I met one man who had seen it 12 times and he said he loved it even more every time".

Jeff Goldblum, who plays the wizard, said he took his children to see the show in London recently and "they loved it".

They are now "very excited" by the prospect of their dad having a role in the film.

The new film explores themes of acceptance, tolerance and how society treats animals - topics that the cast agree "couldn't be more relevant to today".

The two-and-a-half hour musical film is just part one of the story, with the second part due to be released next November.


'Art helps me deal with my cancer diagnosis'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg014gkyx2o, today

After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Wendy Brookfield said she had lots of emotions.

But a referral to art therapy through the Severn Hospice, based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, helped her deal with what she was going through.

"There is so much going on in your mind that being able to go along to art therapy, I could just get it out and get it down on paper," she said.

"It just such a good outlet for me."

Her therapy sessions led to her starting a book of sketches which she regularly filled in, sometimes during her treatment sessions.

They inspired the hospice to host its own art exhibition, built around Ms Brookfield's work and with other pieces created by patients.

"I've just found it gives me so much positivity and I kind of want to share that with people," Ms Brookfield said.

"As a hospice, we are kind of scary to people," Rebecca Richardson, director of care, added.

"People think it is a place where people come to die and actually we do so much more.

"And we really want to connect with our communities."

The event, which opened on the 4 November, was also a chance for the hospice, which costs about £10m to run each year, to raise much-needed funds.

Local artists were invited to sell their work with proceeds going to the hospice.

Among them was Karen Worrall who, as well as painting in her spare time, works as a volunteer running art therapy sessions.

She said she was inspired to give back after seeing the treatment her father received from Severn Hospice.

"Near the end we had great support from the hospice," she said.

"I love art so I thought, right, I'll approach our lovely art therapists and see if I can help.

"When you paint, it is very mindful so you are in that moment and you can forget anything that is going on."

Ms Brookfield said she was amazed by the exhibition.

"A diagnosis is bad news, and it is a thing that so many people have to face," she said

"But if you can find good things to bring through that as well, it brings such an addition to your life."

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Historic barracks to host 'living parade'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wq9gq81w3o, today

An 18th century barracks is to be lit up in a "living parade" as the first event in a five-year plan to increase visitor numbers.

The artwork, made up of large-scale light projections, is part of The Living Barracks project which aims to "restore and renew" the site in Berwick, Northumberland.

Artist Matthew Rosier is asking local people to volunteer to be filmed walking, dancing or skipping, with the results forming part of the Berwick Parade.

The performance will be accompanied by the Pipe Band of the King's Own Scottish Borderers regiment which has its home in the town.

James Lowther, Head of Visual Arts at The Maltings which commissioned it, said: "Local people are at the heart of Matthew's plans and we can't wait to see the results."

Designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, Berwick's Grade 1 listed barracks are described by English Heritage as "the largest and finest built in England".

They could house a full regiment of infantry, whose purpose was to deter uprisings.

Living Barracks is a £12m project which could see the parade ground used for music, theatre and cinema.

The plans also include a new museum, shop and restaurant, with much of the building, two-thirds of which is currently empty, converted into flats.

There will also be workshop spaces for local artists to make and sell their work.

Berwick Parade will be on show between 28 February and 2 March 2025.

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Silent auction marks art charity's 40th birthday

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9gymlyrrno, today

A Surrey charity which runs art studios for adults with learning disabilities is celebrating its 40th birthday with a silent auction.

The Artventure Trust runs art workshops for 55 adults a week at studios in Merrow and Bramley.

The artists have donated 40 works to celebrate the anniversary of the charity.

Manager Mariann Kehrling said the art works were "especially hand-picked for this occasion and I think everybody can find something that they will like".

She said the art sessions were a valuable way for the artists, including people who are non-verbal, to express themselves.

“It’s the nicest thing to see them lost in art and the other brilliant thing is seeing them find their own voice by doing this," she added.

Artist Nico Attallah said: “I hope that my art will be sold to somebody else.”

He said it would make him feel “surprised and amazed” if his work ends up hanging on a buyer's wall.

“I will even amaze myself,” he said.

Nico said making art “helps you be the people you are".

"It helps you be free and you can do whatever you want in your art. And nobody can judge you, who you are.”

Pippa Mathers said she loves creating art.

“It’s quite freeing in a sense. You can come up with whatever you feel like," she said.

The charity’s trustee, Sue Cundell, said work created by Artventure participants has gone on show across Surrey, with displays at Guildford Railway Station and the Electric Theatre, amongst other venues.

Seeing it framed and on display means “you can see their confidence lift,” she said. “They come to life when they start talking about their art work. It gives them something to focus on and they come alive as they’re talking about it.”

People can bid for the artwork until Saturday 1 December.

Christmas cards are also on sale through the Artventure Trust website.

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The quaint English town where the US' future was planned

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241118-the-quaint-english-town-where-the-us-future-was-planned, today

The politely radical English town where one of America's Founding Fathers, and the world's first international revolutionaries, sparked a spirit of rebellion that continues to this very day.

The town of Lewes, with its picturesque cottages and bustling high street full of antiquarian bookshops and artisanal bakeries, might seem the very model of traditional English respectability. Named the "prettiest place in the UK" by The Telegraph (a trusted arbiter of British middle-class tastes), sedate tea shops and art galleries line the medieval alleyways where smartly dressed locals greet each other courteously. Even the local flea market, housed in a former Methodist chapel, is an upstanding example of grand Victorian architecture.

Yet beneath this veneer of conservative conformity lies a history of radicalism that runs to the core of this quaint Sussex town. 

Each year on 5 November, Lewes turns into a blazing frenzy of raucous anti-establishmentarianism. Its cute coffee shops and organic grocery stores lie abandoned as grotesque effigies (or "tableaux") of public figures – ranging from British prime ministers and business leaders to the Pope and, more recently, Joe Biden and Donald Trump — are set on fire and paraded through the streets.

Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations, the biggest and oldest in Britain (dating to 1795), exemplify the spirit of rebellion in this town where Thomas Paine, the English-born American Founding Father, political philosopher and one of the world's first international revolutionaries, lived 250 years ago 

Paine, whose writings influenced both the American and French Revolutions and helped inspire the US Declaration of Independence, lived in Bull House on Lewes' High Street from 1768 to 1774. While working there as an excise officer, collecting taxes on behalf of King George III, Paine was a frequent speaker at a political debating society, The White Hart Evening Club. Its meetings were held at 16th-Century inn The White Hart, also on Lewes High Street, which recently reopened after a major refurbishment as a luxury hotel complete with restaurant and bars, yet retains many of the original features from Paine's time, including his initials carved into one of the fireplaces.

The debating society later changed its name to the Headstrong Club but, now under new management, The White Hart has once again become a centre of life in Lewes. It's also a place of pilgrimage for Americans fascinated to see where many of the ideas that would eventually lead to the birth of their nation were first formulated; as well as for the politely radical citizens of Lewes who celebrate Paine's memory and the enlightenment principles he espoused.

I meet in the hotel's lounge with Richard Powell, a retired diplomat who is the current chairman of the new Headstrong Club, relaunched in 1987 on the 250th anniversary of Paine's birth. Over a bottle of Tom Paine ale – brewed locally by Harvey's who were established in 1790 and own several pubs in the town, including The Rights of Man across the road, named after one of Paine's seminal works – Powell tells me how the American Founding Father's spirit is very much alive in Lewes.

"Any 'citizen of the world' is welcome," he says, quoting one of Paine's famous phrases, "at our monthly meetings [now held at the Elephant & Castle pub within walking distance of The White Hart]. They can just pay £5 on the door. We're also happy to be approached by people wanting to propose a subject to speak about, just like Tom [Paine] used to. We get viewpoints right across the spectrum, and some of them do occasionally cause pain – no pun intended – such as the time we had a discussion on gender identity and the police had to be brought in to deal with threats being made to some opinion holders." 

Might the US's new president-elect be a future subject for debate, I ask him. "Not while I'm in charge," Powell laughs. "We tend more towards things like the politics of climate change, or the role of church and state – a topic that Paine himself felt and wrote strongly about."

A statue of Paine stands proudly outside the town's library, whilst his tradition of bold political discourse is also honoured at the annual Lewes Speakers Festival. The January 2025 event will feature Penny Mordaunt, the former UK Secretary of State for Defence, talking about how the country's deep divisions can be overcome by political reform. A subject that Paine – who once said, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again" (quoted in speeches by both Ronald Regan in 1980 and Barack Obama in 2009) – would have no doubt approved.

After being fired from his job for attacking its pay and conditions in his first published pamphlet, "The Case of the Officers of Excise", Paine left Lewes for Philadelphia in 1774, intending to make a new life in the American Colonies (on the advice of Benjamin Franklin whom he had met in London). It was here that he used the political skills he had honed in Lewes to write "Common Sense". This 50-page pamphlet, the most widely read during the American Revolution, sold more than half a million copies and paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, which Paine is believed to have helped draft, by advocating for a republican government free from British control. 

Bull House, where he lived, is now in the hands of the Sussex Archaeological Society; established in 1846, it is the oldest of its kind in Britain. According to the Society's museums officer, Emma O'Connor, Lewes is a magnet for visiting history lovers as well as for residents moving here from the capital (known as DFLs: "down-from-Londoners"), many of whom commute to arts and media jobs in London, just more than an hour away. 

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"A lot of Thomas Paine's Lewes would still be familiar to him today," she said. "Lewes is a historic town and all the best bits are still there. And for anybody that has a mind to, there's a lot going on that's of interest and lots of avenues for self-enlightenment, whatever your interests may be. We've Glyndebourne [opera house] on the doorstep, as well as Brighton a few miles down the road. And you can't fail to notice that bang in the middle of Lewes High Street, there's a stonking great castle!"

Originally begun just after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (the site of which lies less than 25 miles to the east of Lewes), the Norman castle took 300 years to complete. It is open to the public and now adjoins Lewes Museum, which covers all periods of the town's history, including Paine and the annual bonfire celebrations. 

More recently, one of the most famous of all people connected with Lewes – and one that perfectly embodies the town's spirit of "respectable and reserved on the outside, radical and revolutionary on the inside" – is the writer Virginia Woolf. Part of the Bloomsbury group, a coterie of avant-garde artists, writers and intellectuals whose uninhibited, polyamorous lifestyles predated the 1960s' sexual revolution by decades, Woolf took rooms in 1910 at The Pelham Arms on Lewes High Street. She later owned the Round House in Pipe's Passage, a building she described in a letter to the painter Dora Carrington, as "the butt end of an old windmill". Her final, more aesthetically pleasing home – and inspiration for her short story The Orchard – Monks House in neighbouring Rodmell, was purchased at an auction in The White Hart.

Vanessa's grandson (and Virginia's Woolf's great-nephew), Julian Bell, is himself an artist and fellow Lewesian. He believes "the Lewes area has always had a community on the radical, liberal side, including some of my ancestors who were, I suppose, the original DFLs".

Bell's mural of Thomas Paine, painted in 1994, is on display in the town's Market Passage. And, for this year's Lewes Bonfire Celebrations, he helped create a tableau of the Houses of Parliament which were then blown up as part of the town's anarchic festivities. "We were fulfilling Guy Fawkes' intentions to destroy the seat of parliamentary democracy," Bell tells me, jokingly.

Paine and his respectfully rebellious friends at The White Hart preferred a less direct form of action to Guy Fawkes: the power of the printing press. Before the days of electronic communications, printed pamphlets were the social media posts of their day; used by activists and thinkers, such as Paine, to disseminate ideas and rally national or even international support for change and justice. A press similar to the one that Paine used to publish his pamphlets is on display across the road from Bull House at The Tom Paine Printing Press and Gallery. 

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren" is another of the favourite sayings of the political philosopher, whose writings inspired and helped shape revolutions in both America and Europe. However far and wide this pioneering revolutionary and his rebellious ideas travelled, though, there will forever be a part of him that remains in Lewes. For those looking to change the world themselves – or merely enjoy a quiet pint by a cosy fireplace – The White Hart in Lewes is not a bad place to start.

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Five countries helping you reconnect you with your roots

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241118-five-countries-helping-you-reconnect-you-with-your-roots, today

As DNA ancestry testing kits like Ancestry and 23&Me have become more accessible and affordable, "heritage tourism", or travel based on reconnecting people with their places of origin, has become more popular than ever.

With tests offering percentage-based estimates of where your DNA might hail from, those who don't have direct knowledge of their genealogy can explore the places where their families may have originated.

What's more, the rise of roots travel is being looked at as a sustainable alternative to overtourism. The European Union in particular, which sees the highest rates of tourism (and subsequently overtourism) in the world, has been calling for its member states to promote roots tourism, which often can lead visitors to seek out smaller villages and under-touristed regions, which in turn boost local economic development. 

Travel agencies specialising in heritage trips and tours have been growing in popularity, too. In 2021, Kensington Tours partnered with Ancestry.com to create a series of heritage journeys to places like Italy, Germany, Japan and Ghana in partnership with a professional genealogist to help provide a more comprehensive analysis of the sites that might hold the most history and meaning for a family origin journey. "These trips really started to gain in popularity in 2022 once the pandemic ended and travel restrictions were lifted globally," said Debra Loew from Kensington Tours. "This is also when we saw a dramatic increase overall in multi-gen travel as families really looked to reconnect through travel after many months – and in some cases years – without travelling." 

While many European countries have been promoting roots travel for decades, others are offering new and specific ways to connect visitors with their heritage. Here are a few of the places that are best helping travellers return to their roots.

Italy

Nearly 80 million people around the world can trace their ancestry back to Italy, and the Italian Ministry of Tourism is encouraging those in the diaspora to return, deeming 2024 the "Year of Italian Roots in the World". They've even launched the website Italea to make it easier for visitors to find more information about the country's 20 regions, with tips on how to uncover family origin stories. 

Tour operators have seen impressive results from the initiatives. "Heritage travel has been the foundation of my business, making up more than 95% of our focus," said Marino Cardelli, who founded travel agency Experience BellaVita in 2018. "This work has become more than a business – it's a profoundly rewarding calling that allows me to help clients from around the world reconnect with their Italian roots. The majority of my clients seek out specific towns in Italy to uncover family histories, and we offer dedicated genealogy services to assist them."

He notes that tracing family history here can be complex. Many Italians emigrated in the early 1900s, and their original homes may have been destroyed during the World Wars. Still, Italy has extensive civil and parish records dating as far back as the 1400s that can supply promising information – and sometimes even lead to locating living relatives.

Ghana

This West African country, once the epicentre of the transatlantic slave trade, has long been welcoming members of the African diaspora to return to their roots, including The Year of the Return in 2019 and The Joseph Project in 2007. The rise of DNA testing has been a particular growth driver of African descendants looking to understand more of the specific regions or ethnic groups that their families might have hailed from.

Because of its history as a key port during the slave trade, Ghana often marks an important stop in roots travel to Africa. Between the 16th and 18th Centuries, tens of thousands of enslaved people per year passed through places like Elmina Castle, the last continental holding cells before they were sent on ships to North and South America. 

Today heritage tours like Kensington's "Door Of No Return Ancestral Journey" offer visits to those historic sites, alongside meetings with experts to explore stories from visitors' specific ethnic groups and heritage, and learn about their migration, customs and cultures.

Scotland

More than 40 million people living around the world can claim Scottish ancestry of some kind, according to Visit Scotland, and as a result, millions of travellers return each year to reconnect with their roots. In particular, 70% of "long-haul" visitors (those hailing from further afield like Canada, the US, Australia and Asia) state that history and culture is the reason for their visit – and many who do come report a feeling like "coming home" or belonging from the second they step on Scottish soil. Scotland has also seen a rise in ancestry and history-based travel based on popular shows set in the country like Outlander.

For travellers who know the names of some of their ancestors, the government-run site Scotland's People offers records searchable by name and year. Others, who might just be starting with a distinctive Scottish surname, can try researching their clan name; one small Leith-based business, Scots Clan, offers a comprehensive A-Z listing of every clan, with mottos, tartans and associated people and places.

Covering more than 30 sites and 5,000 years of history, The Explorer Pass offered by Historic Environment Scotland is one way to discover places that might be of family note, like Campbell Castle or the even more ancient ancestors of the Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement.

India

With the world's biggest diaspora, with around 18 million people born in the country recorded as living overseas, India has good reason to both attract those citizens and others with Indian ancestry back for a visit. Most recently, the government launched the Pravasi Bharatiya Express, a brand new tourist train specifically for those of Indian origin. The catch? You must be between the ages of 45 and 65 to qualify for the ride, scheduled to depart on 9 January 2025, a date chosen to commemorate the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to India in 1915. 

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Though the train only has a capacity of 156 passengers, the three-week journey will cover important touristic and religious sites across the country, including Ayodhya, Patna, Gaya, Varanasi, Mahabalipuram, Rameshwaram, Madurai, Kochi, Goa, Ekta Nagar (Kevadia), Ajmer, Pushkar and Agra. Nominations can be sent to the government, who will cover the majority of the cost for those selected.

It's likely these types of investments will continue as India focuses its tourist efforts on promoting heritage. The country has already seen a post-pandemic boost, with a 46% growth in both inbound and outbound tourism, according to Trevolution Group. Behind that trend, the report saw a big jump in Indian Americans travelling back to the country to see friends and relatives, suggesting that roots travel will continue to be a tourism growth driver for the country.

United States

Though the US and Canada both saw plenty of European immigration during their days as British colonies, the cost of that immigration to the Indigenous people has all too frequently been swept aside. Often forced far off their local lands, Indigenous people had no choice but to live elsewhere. Today, some tourism bureaus have made meaningful efforts toward welcoming the descendants back, working in partnership with local Indigenous leaders to preserve and share the important history with displaced descendants and other visitors to the region.

One example is the area that is now Macon, Georgia, which was once 60 villages that formed the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. However, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly relocated the Muscogee Nation to Oklahoma. The importance of the original historical site has never been lost, however, and the tourism bureau Visit Macon has been working in partnership with the Muscogee Nation to preserve historical sites like Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, home to 17,000 years of Indigenous history. The stakeholders have both been pushing to have the area designated as a national park, and if granted, will become one of the first parks in the country to be co-managed by an Indigenous tribe. 

Citizens from the Muscogee Nation have been returning to their land not just as visitors, but active participants in building initiatives and celebrations for the town of Macon. The National Park Service regularly hires Muscogee (Creek) citizens, and priority is given to Nation members for available positions. In September 2024, the first street signs that share both the English and Creek names were unveiled, with 100 more to be installed in the downtown district in the coming months. 

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How railroads inspired the creation of time zones

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241115-how-railroads-inspired-the-creation-of-time-zones, today

The invention of railroads ushered in a new era of land travel, and forever changed the way humans perceive time.

On this day in 1883, railroad companies in the United States and Canada transformed time in both countries, leading to the ground-breaking concept of time zones around the world.

For millennia prior to this date, many people around the world measured time based on the placement of the Sun, with midday (or "high noon") determined by when the Sun was highest in the sky over that particular village or town. Mechanical clocks eventually started replacing sundials in the Middle Ages. Towns would set their clocks by gauging the position of the Sun, leading every city to operate on a slightly different time. This method lasted well into the 1800s, when there were at least 144 different time zones in North America.

Since many people didn't travel especially long distances from their homes throughout history (generally as far as a horse, camel or wagon could carry them on land) this rudimentary form of timekeeping didn't cause much of a problem – that is, until the advent of the railroad.

According to Jon Goldman, chief curator at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, in the mid-1800s, as trains became increasingly popular in the US and Canada and railroads began carrying more passengers and freight across the continent, the need to create a more coordinated timekeeping system wasn't just an issue of efficiency but national safety.

"The existence of different local time zones created major problems for the railroad," he explained. "At best, people might miss their train; at worst, trains were more likely to collide when using a single track."

During this time, the UK – which birthed the modern railway in 1825 – had already experienced a very similar issue. As railroads began to better connect cities and towns to one another, it became apparent that stations couldn't keep listing dozens of arrival and departure times for each train based on local time zones. By 1847, all British railway companies had adopted a single standard "Railway Time" time across their networks. The new timekeeping method (now known as Greenwich Mean Time) was adopted nationwide in 1880, making the UK the first country to standardise time.

Greenwich Mean Time is effectively, the average or "mean" time when the Sun crosses the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Today, travellers can still visit the so-called "Centre of Time" at the observatory in London and straddle the imaginary Prime Meridian line where the eastern and western hemispheres meet.

Standardising time across Great Britain improved efficiency, reduced the amount of rail accidents and helped passengers make their connections. As a result, it didn't take long before this idea spread to North America. But unlike the UK which only had to standardise time across a country, the US and Canada needed to figure out a way to standardise time across an entire continent.

In 1879, a Canadian rail engineer named Sir Sanford Fleming came up with a revolutionary idea after missing a train: the creation of time zones. On 18 November 1883, the US and Canadian railroad industries adopted Fleming's idea, but because of the sheer size of the North American continent, it was decided that four major time zones would be created: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific time – each of which remain relatively unchanged to this day.

"With a new unified time zone system, railroad accidents were far less likely to occur," Goldman explained. A year later, Fleming helped convene the International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington DC, where the Greenwich Meridian was selected to be the common zero of longitude and the standard of reckoning time throughout the world.

In North America, local towns and cities, eager for the prosperity and opportunities brought by the railroad, were quick to adopt their continent's new time zones. The US federal government, however, was a bit slower and fully adopted these new time zones in 1918.

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Time is just one of many cultural transformations ushered in by the advent of rail travel. As railroads helped to spread people and ideas across the globe, there became a growing need to communicate across vast distances as well. It's no coincidence that the very first electronic message, a telegraph, was sent from the US Capitol Building to Mount Clare rail station in Baltimore, which is now the site of the B&O Railroad Museum. Today at the museum, visitors can see dozens of restored trains, learn more about train travel as part of the Underground Railroad and even ride the Mile One Express, which travels along the first mile of commercial railroad track ever laid in the US. And as the UK counts down the minutes, hours and days until 2025, when nationwide events are scheduled as part of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railroad, there's never been a better time to ponder how the coordinated scheduling of the entire planet started on this day.

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'I bought a helicopter for people to sleep in'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0en7d29291o, today

The owners of a guest house in Cornwall are offering people the chance to sleep in the back of a helicopter.

The cockpit of the decommissioned Lynx helicopter has been preserved as it was during the days it was used during the Falklands War.

But the back of the aircraft has been converted into a bedroom, complete with curtains, carpet and a double bed.

Owners Mike and Caroline Thomas said they decided to buy the Royal Navy aircraft as extra sleeping space for customers at their guest house in Lizard Village.

The aircraft was used during the Falklands War and involved in transporting British military figures to the Argentine surrender in 1982.

Mr Thomas said he had paid around £25,000 for the fuselage and added the rotors to make the helicopter experience "more authentic" .

"When it arrived and was lifted into our garden the engine and gearbox had already been removed," he said.

"After that I had to remove the fuel tanks and some other equipment to make space for the sleeping compartment - I got busy with my angle grinder."

"The fuselage only has enough room for a bed really, so guests use a nearby toilet and shower facilities and have breakfast in the main guesthouse."

He said guests could also relax in the old crew seats set around a fire pit in the evenings.

Falklands surrender

The aircraft was formerly used by 815 squadron based at RNAS Yeovilton ( HMS Heron).

Mr Thomas said: "It would have served on the back of frigates and destroyers hunting submarines, border force control, that kind of thing."

Guests can read extracts from the aircraft's handwritten logbook.

"A neighbour flew this aircraft on a number of occasions. It was one of the two aircraft that took a general to sign the surrender from the Argentinians in the Falklands war in1982," said Mr Thomas.

'Bit of a landmark'

The seats of the aircraft have been removed to make way for the sleeping area but the cockpit is almost fully intact.

"I've seen some guests sit in the cockpit seats reading a book on a rainy day," said Mr Thomas.

He said the aircraft had become "a bit of a landmark" in Lizard village.

"People often say 'just look for the helicopter'," he said. "It's certainly raised a few eyebrows and provided a bit of mild amusement."


Why did one million more tourists visit Teesside?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxwpw853ejo, today

More than one million extra tourists flocked to Teesside last year, latest figures have revealed.

They came for big events such as the Hardwick music festival and the Tall Ships Races - and to eat.

Tees Valley Combined Authority's (TVCA) latest report said 19.4 million tourists visited the region last year, about one million more than in 2022.

Alison Gwynn, from the Tees Valley Business Board, said the boosted figures were down to the region's "unique charm" and "incredible potential" of its food and drink businesses.

"Our firms are the heart of this growth, showcasing the passion and creativity that make the Tees Valley a destination of choice," she said.

"As more people discover the flavours, experiences, and warm hospitality we have to offer, our businesses all play a vital role in driving the region forward as a premier place to visit, enjoy, and return to time and time again."

'Hidden gems'

The pull of Teesside's food and drink also led to a big financial boost for the region, with the sector thought to have grown by £20m to £426m.

Its rise in popularity also led to more people finding work in the industry. There were 1,300 more people working in tourism and hospitality jobs last year, making the total 12,600.

The figures were calculated using the STEAM model, which estimates how much visitor spending brings to a local economy.

Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said the area was "chock full of hidden gems the world should know more about".

"These figures show the word is getting out there, and our efforts to back global names and events coming to our region, and to showcase the best we have to offer, are paying off," he said.

Houchen, a Conservative peer, added the combined authority had more work to do but "the numbers show we're heading in the right direction".

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Mountain Road closures for resurfacing works

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8yl9vm64do, today

There will be a number of closures on a section of a major route between the Isle of Man's capital and the north for resurfacing and drainage works.

A 1km (0.6 mile) stretch of the A18 Mountain Road will be resurfaced and reprofiled as part of a road safety improvement programme.

From 2 to 17 December, a number of daytime closures will be implemented between the Brandywell Road and the Creg Ny Baa junction for the road to be surveyed.

Following that, between 31 March to 26 April the road will be closed from the Bungalow to Creg Ny Baa 24 hours a day, as it is excavated for drainage works and resurfaced.

The Department of Infrastructure said the works came following a review of datasets such as road collision data.

It decided to undertake the works to improve the condition and safety of the road.

There is also increased surface water at Kate's Cottage, increasing the risk of ice, as some of the drainage is not working at capacity, the DoI added.

The section of the road will be closed specifically from 09:30 to 16:30 GMT on 2 to 3 December, 9 to 10 December and 16 to 17 December, with additional contingency dates of 11 and 18 December.

As surveying is weather dependent, if the weather is not suitable to complete the work the road will not be closed.

The Bungalow, Victory Cafe, Creg Ny Baa, Snaefell Mountain Railway and Snaefell Summit Cafe can still be accessed throughout the closure periods.

There will be additional road closures from 14 to 17 April and 22 to 25 April from Ramsey to the Bungalow as part of the programme.

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Seafront Ferris wheel to stay until 2027

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5l15klz0no, today

A 50m-high (164ft) seafront Ferris wheel that allows people to see along the Norfolk coastline will remain for a further two years.

The attraction, which is about one third of the size of the London Eye, has been on Great Yarmouth's Golden Mile since 2021 and was only meant to be temporary.

The extension was granted by Great Yarmouth Borough Council on Wednesday and the big wheel will remain at the seafront until February 2027.

Asa Morrison, chief executive of Visit Great Yarmouth, said: "The seafront is forever changing, ever reinventing itself, ever moving... it [the Ferris wheel] can compliment all the other assets we've got."

The attraction is currently going through a "winterisation" period, but it usually allows visitors to see as far north as Hemsby and Winterton, south to Gorleston and Lowestoft in Suffolk, and inland across part of The Broads.

Mr Morrison said it can also be seen by people driving into Yarmouth along the Acle Straight road.

"It dominates the seafront in terms of something rather unique and something rather special... the views are striking," he said.

"One of the beauties of Great Yarmouth is because we're not particularly mountainous, your views are uninterrupted."

The wheel was originally erected on council-owned South Beach Gardens at "no cost" to the local authority and was hired from a private company.

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A day out with Bluey: Australia's new experience brings the Heeler family to life

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241115-australias-new-experience-brings-bluey-to-life, today

Brisbane has a new star attraction, and it's turning the city blue(y). Bluey's World, an interactive family-friendly experience, has just opened its doors, inviting fans of the hit children's TV show into the Heeler family's world for the first time.

Bluey, the animated blue heeler pup who's won the hearts of children and adults around the world, has become an Australian icon. Her tales of imaginative play, family adventures and everyday life in Brisbane have not only made her a household name but have thrust the Queensland capital into the international spotlight. Now, the new, one-of-a-kind experience offers an opportunity for fans to step directly into Bluey's animated universe, blending reality with the magic of the show.

The 70-minute guided experience takes place at Brisbane's Northshore Pavilion, a custom-built 4,000 sq m building on the Brisbane River in the city's Northshore-Hamilton district. It begins with small groups being led by a magical fairy (from the Fairies episode) into a recreation of the Heeler family home, instantly recognisable with its red roof and iconic Queenslander style. From here, the whole experience – led by a brought-to-life garden gnome – is a carefully crafted journey into the world of Bluey, Bingo, Bandit and Chilli, packed full of hands-on activities, interactive games, puzzles to solve and immersive sets.

Unlike typical theme park-style attractions, this experience is less about flashy rides and more about encouraging kids to engage in imaginative play and teamwork – just like Bluey and Bingo do. The storyline draws directly on the show, with more nods to iconic episodes like "Keepy Uppy" and "Magic Xylophone".

Life-size recreations of iconic show settings include the Heeler living room, Bluey and Bingo's cubby and bedroom, and the backyard (complete with a huge poinciana tree). Beloved characters drive the experience's storyline, from Chattermax to Unicorse, and there are enough Easter eggs and tiny details to enthrall the most avid Bluey fan.

After the hour-long experience, visitors have another 60 minutes to order a spring roll or pizza from the Golden Crown Takeaway, browse the gift shop and play at the indoor playground inspired by Bluey's Brisbane neighbourhood.

A local creation, loved worldwide

Bluey's success is a point of pride for Brisbane. Created by Joe Brumm and produced by local studio Ludo for ABC Kids (it's co-commissioned by ABC Children’s and BBC Studios), the show has achieved a level of global recognition rarely seen for Australian children's programming. It's now broadcast in more than 60 countries and has become a favourite on streaming platforms like Disney+. Bluey's World feels like a celebration of this achievement; a love letter to the show's fans and a nod to Brisbane's creative talent.

"Bluey's World being staged right here in Brisbane is a match made in heaven," said Andrew Powell MP, Queensland's Minister for Environment and Tourism, and Minister for Science and Innovation. "Queensland is Bluey's home for real life and we're expecting the economic impact of Bluey's World to be immense, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend and more than $18m [pumped] into the local economy – numbers which we know will grow as word spreads of just how special this event really is."

For Brisbane locals, the Bluey Experience will be a welcome addition to the city's family attractions, offering a new way to spend a day out with the kids while celebrating a beloved home-grown success story. For travellers from further afield, it's a chance to connect with a show that's become a global sensation and to see the real-life inspiration behind the animated scenes. Whether you've come to meet Bluey and Bingo in person or to explore the imaginative sets and activities, the experience captures the joyful spirit of the show and the city itself. In the end, it's not just an attraction – it's an invitation to play, imagine and see the world with a little more wonder, just like Bluey would.

Bluey’s World is produced by BBC Studios and HVK World, and supported by the Queensland Government.

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A 'crazy town looking to go fossil free': Sweden's wooden city that was green before Greta

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241114-swedens-wooden-city-that-was-green-before-greta, today

Nearly a decade before Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was even born, Växjö set itself on a path to a new vision of green urban living.

The 1,000-year-old Swedish city of Växjö sits 450km south-west of Stockholm in the central region of Småland amid a lush tapestry of sylvan landscapes dotted by hundreds of lakes. This is a land known as the Glasriket ("Glass Kingdom") that's home to a string of globally renowned glassworks such as Kosta Boda and Orrefors who have created crystalline gorgeousness from fiery furnaces since the 1740s.

But that glassmaking heritage is now matched by changemaking: this compact city of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants has become a global beacon in the battle against climate change. Nearly a decade before Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was even born, Växjö set itself on a path to a new vision of urban living that's now been emulated worldwide.

"It was a seminar in 1996 led by the mayor, which asked the question: 'What would it be like to live in a fossil free city?'," explains Henrik Johansson, environmental strategist for Växjö Municipality. By the end of that meeting, a unanimous vote saw Växjö become the first city in the world to commit to become fossil fuel free. This has now evolved into a bigger target of climate neutrality by 2030 – 15 years ahead of Sweden's nationwide commitment.    

Växjö's groundbreaking 1990s commitment drew media coverage from as far afield as Japan, with TV crews ironically taking fuel-guzzling long-distance flights to visit the place Johansson wryly describes as "this crazy town looking to go fossil free". None of it seems crazy now, however, with Växjö's per capita carbon emissions slashed by more than 70%  from 1990s levels, all while the city has grown in population by a third and doubled its per capita GDP.

Here, local buses and council vehicles run on biofuel made from domestic household organic waste. More than 90% of the city's energy, meanwhile, is sourced from forestry by-products and other biomass, with plentiful material coming from the vast surrounding forests. This ranges from sawdust from local timber mills to branches left from tree-felling to make goods for IKEA – the global design giant born just a half hour train ride away in the town of Älmhult.

The few CO2 emissions that linger in the air stem from personal car users who are still not taking advantage of one of Sweden's best provisions of electric car charging stations, plus places to fill up on non-fossil biofuels such as ethanol.

The boldest transition, though, has seen Växjö become perhaps the world's leading showcase for large-scale timber architecture, with half of all new builds required to be in wood, sourced from the same sprawling forests that once provided fuel to fire the glasswork furnaces.

I arrive in Växjö by train and can't help but start snapping pictures of a station interior unlike any I've ever seen. Stepping off the platform, I enter a seven-storey edifice that hosts both the Central Station and Växjö City Hall, and everywhere I look, there's wood. Here, timber is used for both structure and decor in a calm, soaring space that also includes a tourist office, exhibition area and eye-catching artworks made from pale wood. It's such a welcoming space that it's been nicknamed the city's public "living room".  

A wooden bridge connects the station with a museum quarter that I explore the next day, featuring the Swedish Glass Museum within the Småland Museum; plus the House of Emigrants, which tells the often revelatory story of Swedish mass emigration to North America.

The museum enclave is also home to myriad relocated buildings from past centuries – I particularly like the windmill as a symbol of ancient green power, built from timbers painted the iconic Swedish shade known as Falu or Falun Red, named after its historic source from mines around the eponymous town.   

Heading down to the shore of Lake Trummen – one of two nearby lakes, along with sculpture-lined Växjösjön – I potter along a trail of modern sculptures that provides a cultural promenade of contemporary works chosen and voted for by residents. Glass art is celebrated too, with contrasting crystalline creations placed along the cosmopolitan length of Sandgärdsgatan that runs through the heart of the city centre to the iconic double-spired cathedral.

It's a beautiful stroll, and I wonder whether people would have been so keen to leave Sweden if 19th-Century life had offered what the 21st-Century nation does. Alongside enviable public services and a famously equable society, I'm getting housing envy staring up at contrasting high-rise wooden apartment blocks that make up the award-winning Kvarteret Geologen residential complex (also known as Trummens Strand), standing tall and proud by the lake.

Here, I'm joined by Olivia Thim, a sustainability expert for property management firm Vöfab. "For a long time, we had the tallest wooden building in Sweden," Thim says. "But also a diversity: apartments, sports arenas, schools. We just thought that we should try to build everything in wood first."

Also with us is architect Karin Hård Af Segerstad from leading Växjö practice Arkitektbolaget, who tells me about the super-strong cross-laminated timber (CLT) used for structural frames, augmented by cedar shaving facades and various interior woods. This swaddling in natural materials is as pleasing to the residents as it is to the eye, she says: “People report an improved sense of well-being living surrounded by wood."

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For architects and engineers, Växjö's showcasing of innovative timber builds has been a valuable learning curve. "People weren't so knowledgeable about wooden high-rise buildings, so we have close collaboration with the local university," says Segerstad. "Every time there was a question, there would be research done." 

This includes sensors within buildings to record how the structures perform over years and changing seasons. "Now we have researchers coming from around the world," she continues. "Many from Austria and Germany, but also places in Africa such as Congo.  We have become world pioneers to build in wood. Aesthetic principles are as important as ecological ones." 

The environmental drive underpinning Växjö's modern wood architecture is matched by how the city powers its 21st century life. Exploring the city centre, I can see innovative new wooden structures next to historic clapboard buildings, many transformed into trendy shops or atmospheric restaurants, such as Kafe de Luxe where the traditional Swedish dishes rely on produce from the surrounding land and water.  

Meanwhile, at modern design hotel PM & Vanner, the restaurants focus on local, seasonal and organic dishes, including produce from the hotel's own garden – while dishes are cleaned using an energy- and water-saving dishwasher. Food waste is turned into biofuel, and the hotel is also part of an innovative textile recycling system.

Before I leave, I walk around the wood-decorated offices of local power generator VEAB with CEO Erik Tellgren, who tells me how forest and wood product "waste" taken from around Växjö easily provides all the electricity requirements of the city, in a manner that also helps the battle to mitigate climate change.

"Forest residues left to decompose generate CO2," says Tellgren. "So, using it up helps cut emissions." And, he adds, the ash produced from the burned wood is returned to the forest floor as an excellent compost.

He smiles as he recalls how Växjö's first power plant, which fired up here beside the lake in the 1880s, burned wood, and now some 140 years later, the town is again relying on the material as it leads the world away from fossil fuels

"So we began with wood, and now we come back to it again," he says.

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The 900km Amazon highway that's dividing a nation

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241113-the-900km-amazon-highway-thats-dividing-a-nation, today

The BR-319 is famed as one of South America's most challenging drives, but those who attempt it are rewarded with an unfiltered experience of the Amazon that few get to see.

Nobody seems to remember how Brazil's Road of Ghosts came by its name. Maybe it was due to the long, desolate stretches along its 900km course through the Amazon rainforest without a soul or settlement in sight. Or perhaps its "ghosts" are the burnt-out carcasses of overturned freight trucks found abandoned on the roadside. Though the highway's dire condition makes it impassable in the rainy season, drivers will often gamble on its condition in the summer months, braving crater-sized potholes and bouncing along dry, dusty ruts. Sometimes the odds aren't in their favour. I grip the handlebars of my motorcycle a little tighter and hope that they'll be in mine. 

The Road of Ghosts – officially the BR-319 – is the only overland connection between the Amazonian city of Manaus, home to more than two million people, and the rest of Brazil, ending in Rondônia's state capital, Porto Velho. Built in the 1970s to facilitate the exploitation of the Amazon's natural resources, its construction led to an influx of pioneering migrants drawn to the region from across Brazil under promises of cheap agricultural land and opportunity. But without proper maintenance, much of the BR-319 soon fell into disrepair, leaving the Wild West-style communities that had emerged along its length isolated and forgotten.

Now, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to have the BR-319 rebuilt. The highway's advocates argue that this will help integrate the states of Amazonas and Rondônia into the national economy. But its detractors – including those in Lula's government – warn that restoring the BR-319 will transform it into an open gateway to previously untouched areas of the Amazon, paving the way – quite literally – for unprecedented levels of deforestation.

For travellers, the BR-319 carries a different significance. Famed as one of South America's most thrilling and challenging drives, it invites overlanding enthusiasts to test their mettle against a jungle environment that's equal parts extraordinary and exhausting. In the dry season, the Land Cruisers and adventure motorcycles that join the freight trucks on road are often manned by intrepid visitors detouring from the famed Pan-American highway (Porto Velho is less than 300km from the Bolivian border). A wild drive through the rainforest ends in Manaus, a vibrant and exciting city best known by travellers as the gateway to eco-adventures in the jungle and river expeditions along the Amazon.

Few people know more about driving the BR-319 than Flávio Bressan. Through his Brasília-based adventure company Cerrado Moto Aventura, Bressan leads motorcycle tours deep into the Amazon along the BR-310, guiding riders across the rainforest's difficult terrain while sharing the important story of a rich and diverse region at the crossroads of change.

These tours have also helped to map newly emerging roads and points of interest to inform future travellers. "Just a few years ago, we had almost no data on the Amazon's roads," Bressan tells me. "Only dramatised accounts from the travellers that had driven them. But the routes aren't as dangerous as many Brazilians believe," he adds, as he hands me the keys to the Royal Enfield Himalayan motorbike that will carry me into the heart of the Amazon. "It's still a challenging drive, but it's no longer true to call it the Road of Ghosts. You'll see that the Amazon is not as abandoned or underdeveloped as we're told."

My ride to Porto Velho takes me through the undulating plains of Brazil's vast interior, past endless soy plantations and remote agricultural towns. I'm travelling solo – Bressan is leading another tour along the Transamazônica, another rainforest highway that runs from Brazil's east coast to the state of Amazonas – but he's helped with my preparations and rented me one of his bikes. From Porto Velho, the first 300km north along the BR-319 makes for smooth riding, with some work having been completed on the road already. But this partially maintained section ends at the frontier town of Realidade, where the asphalt gives way to rough dirt and mud. The town's name means "reality" in Portuguese, and the harsh one here is that life might have been so different for its few thousand residents if the government had delivered on its promises to repair the highway running through the town.

I pull up to a weathered roadside cafe where patrons sit on a porch in plastic chairs and pour cold beer into tiny cups. Music drifting in from a tinny speaker is drowned out by the buzz of boisterous conversation. At the bar, a woman introduces herself as Léia, the owner. She tells me that she moved to Realidade with her family in 2019 when then-president Jair Bolsonaro pledged to have the BR-319 repaved. "But the road never happened," she says. "Five years later and we're still waiting for it."

A properly asphalted road would bring more opportunities to businesses like Léia's, who bought her diner on the BR-319 to cater to drivers on the long journey between Porto Velho and Manaus. "When it's dry, we see some traffic, and that's good for business," Léia says. "But when the rains arrive, there's nothing." The wet season creates additional challenges for the community, like sewage overflow and difficulties bringing in supplies. Léia's heard that the government plans to improve the road, but after so many false dawns she's reluctant to raise her hopes. "It would be nice, though," she sighs.

The next morning, a smoky haze hangs over Realidade. This is cattle ranch country, where farmers have always used fire to clear swathes of forest for pasture. But a historic drought has turned the Amazon into a tinderbox and the fires have got out of control. I take my phone out to record a man in a wide-brimmed hat scorching a tract of land by the roadside. His eyes meet mine and he says nothing.

As the day wears on, the equatorial sun slowly burns off the thick veil of smoke shrouding the rainforest. By midday, light is beaming through in shimmering waves, casting colour over the canopy and the jungle foliage. Giant ferns dusted with reddish-brown soil lifted from the trail guard the boundary between the BR-319 and endless untamed rainforest, their fronds rippling in a gentle breeze. I stop to take a photo of my bike on a rickety wooden bridge, and a cacophony of raucous squawking betrays two blue macaws streaming across the pale sky in the mid-distance.

And then, as suddenly as the rainforest crept up on me, it disappears. The jungle landscape's towering trees yield to sprawling farmland; from behind a low wooden fence, a herd of cattle eye me curiously. "Land here is cheap," Rosaline, the farmer's wife tells me. She and her husband moved here in January from Rondônia. They prefer not to use fire to tend to their pastures, but that hasn't stopped their land from burning. "The wind brings it to our borders. Now the fire has gone, but the smoke will stay until it rains."

Environmentalists worry that paving the BR-319 will provide land grabbers with easy access to unspoiled areas of the Amazon, allowing them to carve out spur roads for illegal logging and mining operations. They'll soon be followed by farmers who'll buy up the cheap land for cattle ranching and soybean plantations. It's been estimated that this would lead to a fivefold rise in deforestation, clearing the equivalent of an area larger than Florida.

Scientists call this the fish-bone effect: the BR-319 acts as the spine of the fish, and the inevitable and illegal adjacent roads represent its ribs. More deforestation and farming along the skeleton's ribs will likely mean more fires, which is bad news for everybody in the Brazilian Amazon and beyond. But it could also spell disaster for the rainforest's original custodians. More than 300 Indigenous groups in Brazil call the Amazon home, many of which could be directly threatened by a re-developed BR-319 if illegal land-grabbing and deforestation should follow. 

Daiane Tenharim's village was built on land that's belonged to her people, the Indigenous Tenharim-Marmelos, for countless generations. Today, it's connected to the BR-319 via another jungle highway, the Transamazônica, which has brought a host of problems to Tenharim’s doorstep. Over a glass of fresh açai juice, Tenharim explains how the elders in her village have been suffering from respiratory problems linked to the wildfire smoke. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

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"For years we've been fighting to evict the invaders on our territory," she says. "This is supposed to be protected land, but the government is slow to respond to our complaints." 

Sometimes this can lead to conflict, with Indigenous communities like Tenharim's receiving threats from land-grabbers. "If the BR-319 is paved, more people will come from outside states. What protection will we have?" Tenharim asks. "We've always said we're not against the paving, so long as decisions aren't made without consulting the people who already live here. And that includes the Indigenous."

The middle-section of the BR-319 is its most challenging: a 400km stretch of deep ruts and skidding sand spread over baked, bone-rattling earth. There are few ranches here; just dense jungle that threatens to swallow up what's left of the road. Every bump and jolt is a test of skill and endurance, but I catch myself grinning, immersed in the thrill of my expedition off the beaten track in the middle of the world's largest and most important rainforest. At a ferry crossing, I speak with a man in his 50s driving an expensive pick-up truck. Beside him sits his elderly father. They're heading to Manaus for their annual father-son fishing trip along the Amazon's tributaries. When I ask why they chose to drive to Manaus instead of fly, it's the father who replies. "Where is the adventure in that?"

The next day, after another morning spent bouncing along the BR-319's ruts and rocks, the sudden arrival of tarmac under my wheels feels like floating on a cloud. A smile escapes my lips as I twist the throttle and watch the speedometer climb. It's easy to imagine how a fully finished highway with a surface like this would be a lifeline to the communities who live along its length. But paving the way to progress could also threatens to cut deeper scars into an Amazon already under siege. One thing is for sure though: driving the BR-319 will always be a rip-roaring ride through the jungle.

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A unique way to see a hidden side of Venice

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241107-sandolos-a-unique-way-to-see-a-hidden-side-of-venice, today

Smaller than gondolas, "sandoli" are ancient boats that have been used by everyday Venetians for centuries. Today, they whisk travellers to quiet corners Venice where other boats can't go.

It is 09:00 in Venice and a peaceful silence blankets the city's narrow streets and canals. Day-trippers begin to descend on the lagoon, while Luca Padoan leans against a wall near the Rio della Misericordia, one of the canals cutting through the former Jewish Ghetto. As he watches the neighbourhood come alive from behind his sunglasses, a few tourists approach, cautiously asking if they can photograph the handmade sandolo boat moored to his left.

 "I have always explained that this is not a gondola, but its progenitor," Padoan said, stroking its oar.

While Venice is synonymous with the many ornate gondolas that ply its canals, very few people know about the boat's lesser-known relative, the sandolo, that once populated Venice's waterways. Characterised by a steel "curl" on the prow and typically painted midnight black, these flat-bottomed rowing boats were historically used to navigate the shallow waters of the lagoon and to transport goods and people from Venice to the Italian mainland.

"If you do not understand the origin of the city and its evolution, you cannot explain the historical importance of the sandolo. The average depth of the lagoon [in the past was incredibly shallow]. With a normal boat, you couldn't get there," explained Valentino Scarpa, who oversees the nine stazi (stations) where sandolo boats continue to carry Venetians and tourists through the canals today.

The earliest written references of sandoli (the plural of sandolo) date back to 1292. Unlike gondolas, which have always been used for transportation, sandoli were historically used for fishing, racing and hunting as well as ferrying people and building materials throughout the lagoon. Sandoli are also slightly shorter, wider and less ornate than their more popular counterparts. Gondolas typically have two pointed ends: an S-shaped bow depicting the sinuous design of the Grand Canal that crosses the city, and an iron stern. In contrast, sandoli have a painted prow; a flat, open stern; and are less lavish.

These physical differences serve a few practical purposes. In a gondola, the rower typically stands on the side, while a sandolo's symmetrical bottom allows the rower to stand in the middle of the boat. This centralised rowing stance allows for more balanced weight distribution, which increases speed, and its symmetrical design enables the sandolo to carry heavier loads than a gondola with less risk of tipping. 

Like gondolas, sandoli are usually rowed with one oar, but they can also be rowed using two oars at the same time. This technique, known as voga alla vaesana in Venetian, was historically used in areas of the lagoon like Caorle, Marano and Grado to practice valliculture, a medieval fish-farming method pioneered in the Venetian lagoon.

"Historically, every family owned a sandolo. It was the means used in the city to carry people around, to procure food, to fish, and to transport materials," said sandolo rower Livio Bon.

But Scarpa explained that as Venetians began to realise that rowing a gondola was easier than rowing a sandolo, these ancient boats started to be replaced by gondolas.

"It's clear that being able to go with two oars [in a sandolo] is an evolution because it allows you to go faster. However, the gondola, being asymmetrical, is more manageable and easier to row in small canals," Scarpa explained. "The gondola [became] more and more popular, leading to the authorisation of more gondolas. As a result, the gondolier category has become more dominant, and the number of sandoli in the lagoon has decreased."

Today, only 20 sandolisti (sandolo rowers) are left in Venice, compared to 433 gondolieri (gondola rowers). Yet, according to the few remaining sandolisti, riding through the canal in a sandolo is one of the most unique ways to experience Venice's history. Not only do most sandolisti believe its design inspired the gondola and it holds a nostalgic place among many Venetians, it can also explore areas of the city where gondolas can't go.

While gondolas are allowed to pass by the areas where the nine stazi are located, only sandoli are permitted to venture through them. Riding in a sandolo therefore offers tourists a unique opportunity to explore less-crowded historical landmarks where gondolas aren't permitted, such as the Jewish Ghetto, the Ponte dei Greci and the Ponte dell'Olio, among other areas. What's more, because a sandolo is shorter than a gondola, it can navigate narrower canals to less-explored pockets of the city.

"It is a purely traditional job, handed down from generation to generation, and that tells Venice's story," said Chiara Favaro, the daughter of a sandolo rower. "When you are on a [sandolo], you see the city through other eyes – a hidden Venice, the authentic one. The sandolista can tell you things that a tourist guide doesn't know because the stories are often handed down from grandfather to father to son."

Such was the case with Padoan. "I started when I was seven years old with my grandfather, who had a similar boat with which we used to go fishing. [Now] I have been doing this job for 26 years," the 53-year-old said, lowering himself onto his sandolo's cushioned seat. "From November onwards, I dedicate myself to the boat's maintenance: I repaint it while my mum fixes the cushions. Ours is a family business." Then in March, with the arrival of spring, it's time to row again.

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Like Padoan, Scarpa was also introduced to the trade at a young age, spending his weekends from the age of seven learning how to row with his father. After attending university, he returned to Venice to refine the craft.

Today, not everyone is willing to continue what has traditionally been a family business. While this generational pastime has faded, it has also opened the door for aspiring rowers whose families haven't historically been sandolisti to enter the trade.

The Municipality of Venice holds competitions for aspiring sandolisti to apply for licenses in order to join in this profession. To qualify, applicants must complete a professional navigation course, as well as pass a rowing and a swimming test.

"First I repaired household appliances, then I worked as a taxi driver and then I went back to repairing appliances," another sandolista, Mariano Pozzobon says, wiping his face with a blue handkerchief after returning from a ride with some tourists. "I got here through friendships, and now I have been doing this job for 30 years", he concludes.

Other sandolisti agree that there's no other job they'd rather do, and that operating these quintessentially Venetian vessels is more than just a profession.

"Each boat is a world of its own. It [was] a family job where love is passed on. It is not simply a job with an economic return, but a passion," Scarpa says. "It's a job that you only find here: and doing it makes you feel even more Venetian."

"When [tourists] get off, they have to be ecstatic. They have to feel the sound of the water of the canals in their ears, the breeze in their necks, the boat swaying under the weight of the driver. They must breathe beauty," Bon said, while helping a French couple settle into his sandolo. "The sandolo allows you to fully savour the history of Venice."

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A 210km drive through 'the most beautiful place on Earth'

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241106-a-210km-drive-through-the-most-beautiful-place-on-earth, today

Following a traditional path used by traders and invaders, the Georgian Military Road has been a passageway for people and ideas since antiquity.

As my car snakes its way through the Georgian Military Road, a 210km route that twists and turns through Georgia's Caucasus Mountains, I am greeted by lush valleys crisscrossed by gurgling rivers, mountains overgrown with wildflowers and picturesque villages perched on the edge of cliffs. Occasional Georgian Orthodox churches, complete with beautiful barrel domes, appear on the horizon and rows of coloured Soviet mosaics adorn deserted bus stop walls. At one stop, a smiling vendor breaks into song as he hands me a plate of Georgian dumplings by the shimmering blue Aragvi River.

"It is funny, not many tourists visit this part of Georgia. But it is the most beautiful place on Earth and my favourite," says Mirian Takvarelia, a driver at GoTrip Georgia, a local ride-hailing company that hires taxis for multiday trips within the country. "You need to come here only once to fall in love with the Caucasus."

When I ask Takvarelia how long he has been driving tourists on the Georgian Military Road, he smiles. "Too long, " he replies "Maybe 15-16 years now."

Sixteen years may not signify much in other countries, but in the South Caucasian country of Georgia, it marks the end of the five-day Russo-Georgian War of 2008 that left a trail of devastation on the Georgian Military Road. Georgia was part of the Soviet Union from 1921-1991 and the road, which connects Tbilisi with the Russian town of Vladikavkaz, is the only direct overland route connecting Georgia with the Russian Federation.

However, the nation has a much longer history of conflict. Historically, Georgia was an object of rivalry between the Romans, Persians, Ottomans and Russians owing to its strategic location between Europe and Asia. Georgia was also home to an ancient road in the Caucasus Mountains that connected the two continents. The road was called Porta Caucasia and played a crucial role in ferrying troops between empires and launching attacks.

In the 18th Century, following the Treaty of Georgievsk, the Russians established Porta Caucasia as a modern military thoroughfare, which led it to be known as the Georgian Military Road. This route went on to play a key role in many Russian military offensives in the 18th and 19th Centuries, including the Caucasian War, the Russo-Circassian War and the Murid War.

Military history aside, Porta Caucasia was also an important part of the Great Silk Road connecting China with the Mediterranean. Caravans full of silk, spices and jewellery passed along here, while ancient writers like Strabo and Pliny the Elder waxed about the road's natural beauty. Even today, it is an extremely busy route, ferrying everything from cheap electronics to fragrant Armenian flowers within the Caucasus region.

As a passageway for people and ideas since antiquity, the surrounding region's rich cultural heritage have often been overshadowed by conflict. "[Georgian Military Road] is full of art and architecture and represents the beautiful historical heritage of our country," says Sofia Knoeva, a local tour guide at Friendly.ge. "Every tour company in Georgia is now incorporating the Military Road into their basic packages for foreign tourists so that people can experience the region's cultural richness."

Over the next three days, Takvarelia and I chart out an itinerary along the road, from Tbilisi in the south to Stepantsminda in the north, stopping at remote monasteries, Soviet-era mosaics, restaurants serving plates of khinkali (Georgia's giant dumplings) and lush valleys dotted with ruined medieval fortresses.

We begin in the historic city of Mtskheta, the seat of the Georgian Orthodox Church since the 4th Century. Located on the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi rivers, Mtskheta was a key Silk Road trading hub and a holy capital city. It was here that Saint Nino arrived in AD337 and eventually converted Georgia to Christianity.

Mtskheta is now a Unesco World Heritage Site and home to three churches – the Jvari Monastery, the Samtavro Monastery and the massive complex of the Svetitstkhoveli Cathedral. The Samtavro Monastery complex is home to the graves of King Mirian, the first Christian king of Georgia, and his queen Nana; while the Svetitstkhoveli Cathedral, is believed to house Jesus Christ's robe that was brought to Mtskheta by a Georgian Jew named Elioz.

At the 11th-Century cathedral complex, I admire beautifully carved stone reliefs, vivid religious iconography and intricate frescoes. A set of old quevri wine pots in the garden harkens back to when the cathedral made and stored its own wine in these underground earthen vessels. As I stroll through Mtskheta's historic centre, where vendors sell everything from enamelled jewellery and traditional rugs to fragrant spices and wine ice cream, I am transported back to a time when Silk Road caravans would have halted in this ancient city for food, rest and trade.

The most iconic monument in the Mtskheta Unesco ensemble, however, is the tiny Jvari Monastery from the 6th Century. Perched on a cliff overlooking the rivers, this is one of the few surviving examples of early medieval Georgian church architecture, complete with intricate bas-reliefs and Asomtavruli (ancient Georgian script) inscriptions. The church was built at the site of the first wooden cross erected here in the 4th Century to signify the rise of Christianity in Georgia and is still one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites in the Caucasus.

After a day of exploring Mtskheta's religious past, I head deeper into the mountains to explore Georgia's vanishing Soviet mosaics. At the quaint village of Tsikhisdziri, I ask to pull over at a deserted bus stop to admire a colourful – if crumbling – ceramic panel depicting lions, horses, mythical birds and folk images depicted in bright red, blue and yellow.

"Why do you want to stop here?" asks Takvarelia. "The [Georgian] Military Road is lined with mosaic panels, especially on the walls of bus stops but nobody comes to see them anymore," he adds.

Most mosaics along the Georgian Military Road date to the second half of the 20th Century, when they were used to spread political and cultural messages throughout the territories of the Soviet Union. However, the art quickly declined after the USSR's collapse in 1991. Today, most of Georgia's Soviet-era mosaics have either been destroyed or are lying in ruins.

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Sensing my interest in this chapter of Georgia's past, Takvarelia offers to drive me to an abandoned Young Pioneer Camp called Tsiskari near the village of Tskhvarichamia, 30km east of Mtskheta. As I get closer to Tsiskari, scores of colourful mosaic panels line every inch of the road leading to the camp, depicting Georgian festivities and folk life. The most iconic panel is one showing kids in smart Young Pioneer uniforms, playing drums and collecting flowers, infusing life into the otherwise desolate summer camp.

"Oh, but you haven't seen the best mosaic in Georgia yet," says Takvarelia, referring to the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument. So, we head towards the Gudauri Panorama where the most famous Georgian mosaic is located – but not before tasting some delicious khinkali in Pasanauri, a beautiful riverside village where the famed dumplings are believed to have originated.

"Pasanauri khinkalis are the perfect balance of dough, meat and juice – a combination that literally explodes in your mouth," says Takvarelia, as he tilts his head, sips the juice and demonstrates the right way to eat a khinkali. "If you don't tilt your head, you're going to spill all the juice and you don't want to do that," he says, taking another slurp.

My afternoon is spent marvelling at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, a colossal concrete structure that is at first a bit of an eyesore against the stunning Caucasus Mountains. But a closer look reveals images from Georgian and Russian history that celebrate the bond of "friendship" between the two nations.

On the last day, Takvarelia hires a 4x4 and we head off to the remote Truso Valley in north-eastern Georgia, bordering Russia to the north and the breakaway region of South Ossetia to the west. Truso Valley is a mere 22km from Stepantsminda, but it takes us a couple of hours to get to there while navigating precarious mountain roads.

Dotted with abandoned villages and medieval watchtowers, Truso Valley is breathtakingly beautiful. Red-tinted mountains flank meadows covered with wildflowers and ancient churches stand against the glimmering waters of the Terek River. The picturesque Abano Lake bubbles with mineral water while the ruins of the Zakagori Fortress tempt me to channel my inner Indiana Jones.

"I reserved the best for the last. Now, you will never forget the Georgian Military Road," Takvarelia chuckles. I cannot agree more.

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Nordhavn: The Danish 'city' that's been designed for an easy life

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241104-nordhavn-the-danish-city-thats-been-designed-for-an-easy-life, today

Copenhagen's once-industrial port has been planned to make everything – from schools and play areas to businesses and recreational spaces – accessible within five minutes.

While cruising the canals of Copenhagen in the summer of 2023, my guide pointed out Nordhavn, the city's once-industrial neighbourhood, excitedly claiming it would become the coolest new city in Europe. From the boat, I couldn't see much beyond a few residential buildings and lots of giant construction machinery, but, as an architect, I was interested to know more.

So, 12 months later, I returned to Copenhagen and headed back to Nordhavn, just a 15-minute metro ride from Copenhagen's central station. 

This time, standing at Århusgadekvarteret, the core of the new development, I could see gleaming apartment buildings, high-end office spaces and a cafe-lined boardwalk along the previously industrial harbour. Dozens of people were lying on colourful beach towels spread across the waterfront, all soaking in the Scandinavian summer sun. It was a peaceful, serene scene, with none of the morning commuter chaos I was used to seeing in cities around the world.

And that's because Nordhavn has been specifically designed to make life easier.

"Although it looks like any modern district, it's the world's first five-minute city," explained my guide, Bente Hoffman from immersive cultural tour company Slow Tours. "When the project is complete, everything you need will be within a 400m walk."

Commuting is one of the biggest challenges of modern life as it adds so much time into the daily routine. Nordhavn (officially a district of Copenhagen, but described as a city due to its scale and scope) has been designed to make everything – from schools and play areas to businesses and recreational spaces – accessible within five minutes. It is setting a blueprint for a world where residents can fit in a morning workout before strolling to the office, grab lunch at a cute cafe, have a quick swim at the harbour and still make it home in time to take your kids to the playground – all before enjoying a cosy candlelit dinner at home.

Imagine doing all of this without driving from one point to another, without feeling exhausted, and being able to repeat it every day while staying carbon neutral.

"We are creating a neighbourhood that meets everyday needs and special occasions," explained Peter Bur Andersen, an architect from BRIQ Studios that played a crucial role in zoning Nordhavn. "Everything is within walking or biking distance, minimising the need for commuting. The area also promotes a mostly car-free lifestyle, connected by cycle paths and the metro."

Copenhagen is currently the Unesco World's Architecture Capital (until 2026) and innovative solutions for smart living have been brewing across the Danish capital: from Paper Island, designed to focus on public spaces and housing for all income groups; to Carlsberg City District that's built on four pillars of beer production: science, innovation, art and culture.

However, Nordhavn's five-minute city concept is unique. While there are a few 10-minute cities being developed around the world, including one in Seoul, South Korea, Nordhavn's one-of-a-kind concept is the most ambitious urban development project in Scandinavia. It is also the only new urban district anywhere in the world to receive a gold certification for sustainability from the German Sustainable Building Council, or DGNB (the largest network for sustainable building in Europe), according to Andersen.

In Nordhavn, sustainability is about more than reducing energy consumption. Every building constructed must consider its social, economic and environmental impact. For example, the Big Bio Cinema – the city's newest theatre – is constructed from recyclable materials such as aluminium in case the building ever needs to be demolished.

And, according to Anderson, social and economic inclusion has been at the core of all planning. "It is important to bring back what worked well in history," he said. "We used to have the butcher, craftsman, baker and cheese shop – that diversity in everyday encounters. The future city should mix recreational, cultural and commercial spaces, all easily accessible within the neighbourhood."

But until relatively recently, no one would have considered living in this once-industrial district. Irshia Nasreen, an engineer born and raised in central Copenhagen, says, "While I was trying to find a new neighbourhood to move out of the city centre, I never thought I'd move here."

Bente adds, "I didn't think I would do tourist walks in Norhavn. There was nothing to see."

After all, for centuries Nordhavn was a free port filled with cargo ships, grain silos and metal containers. The buildings that existed were warehouses and industrial shipping structures. Then, in 2008, a competition was held to create a sustainable neighbourhood for Copenhagen's future: 179 proposals were submitted and a group of four architectural firms, COBE Architects, Sleth, Rambøll and Polyform were winners.

They designed an urban area of "soft mobility", where it is easier to walk, bike or use public transport than it is to drive; and put the idea of hybrid spaces – something that "avoids creating lifeless spaces and fosters community among residents, employees and visitors", according to Andersen – at its heart. For example, in Nordhavn, a multi-storey car park might have a gym on its roof; an apartment building could include a public restaurant; and a hotel could house a concept store.

Although the entire Nordhavn project won't be finished until 2060, it is being developed in islets (small islands), with key areas such as Nordø and Århusgadekvarteret, already complete and full of life, brimming with locals and tourists. A metro extension to Nordhavn and Orientkaj opened in 2020, providing easy access from the city centre.

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As Hoffman and I walked through Nordø, I admired the ingenuity of using once-unassuming buildings to create chic destinations. Audo House, a warehouse from 1918, is now a boutique hotel, concept store and cafe. Across the road, MENY food supermarket was once a factory for building guns. Because of the building's protected status, MENY had to use the same walls, windows and ceilings as the former World War Two gun factory to create what is now a futuristic food market. Nearby, the raw steel surface of The Silo still resembled its days as a grain silo. But it has now been transformed into a luxurious 17-storey residential building with a public restaurant.

"The beauty of Nordhavn lies in the blend of old and new architecture standing side by side," said Hoffman. "Sustainability is also about preserving the past by repurposing old buildings for modern use."

Nasreen moved to Nordhavn in 2023 and says the calm, car-free environment has transformed her lifestyle. "I love walking around here," she said. "After living in the city centre for 40 years, not hearing the hums of vehicles is refreshing. The proximity of water to all residential areas gives a sense of peace and fresh air. My nephew is awed by the fact that he can swim in the harbour, walk back home for a shower and then go back to the waterfront to enjoy coffee in a cool café. Isn't that amazing?"

She added: "I work from home, and when I need a change of scenery, I head to The Audo House. It's a multifunctional space, so you see tourists checking in the hotel and people shopping for art and furniture while I have a coffee in its cafe on a winter afternoon."

In the early 20th Century, when legendary Danish designer Arne Jacobsen said, "Architecture is not just about creating buildings; it's about shaping the environment and enhancing people's lives," it was theoretical. A century later, Hoffman is leading curious designers and architects like me on walking tours around Nordhavn. As curious as I am, and perhaps with the same intent, they are looking for answers to the question: can architecture be one of the keys to creating a happier urban environment? 

For Nasreen and many others living in Nordhavn, the answer is a resounding yes.

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Eight of the world's most extraordinary tiny hotel rooms

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240820-eight-of-the-worlds-most-extraordinary-tiny-hotel-rooms, today

From Colombia's upcycled sewer pipes to spheres suspended in the sky in Canada, capsule hotels have been reinvented for a new generation of travellers.

By night, the world's first capsule hotel (founded in Osaka, Japan in 1979) must have looked like a morgue, with neat rows of narrow sleeping capsules each containing a recumbent body. But the following day, the occupants – mostly businessmen who had worked late - would rise up and head back to the office, grateful for this efficient sleep solution that had saved them a commute home in the early hours.  

As the concept spread, tourists happy to sleep in a room no bigger than its bed began to bunk up alongside them, eager to sample this unusual aspect of Japanese culture. Fast-forward to today, and high hotel room rates, fuelled by years of rising real estate prices, have supercharged this typically low-cost concept, which offers budget travellers priced out of traditional hotels more privacy than a hostel dormitory and more comfort and connectivity than camping. The capsules, which are predominantly single-occupancy, also answer the current boom in solo travel, with single-sex capsule hotels providing additional security.

With the global capsule hotel market projected to reach $327m by 2031, curious hybrids have emerged to sustain the trend and attract new customers. They're tempting the TikTok generation with increasingly outlandish forms, from upcycled sewer pipes in the Colombian desert to space-age pods with a dashboard of ambient controls in downtown Sydney, Australia – all promising a unique experience and shareable stories for social media. Meanwhile capsule-cum-bookstores invite book lovers to snooze among the shelves, and boutique versions bring luxury to a traditionally no-frills market with fancy decor or promises of fluffy duck-feather duvets.

As the concept continues to reinvent itself, here are eight of the most extraordinary examples.

A sleep laboratory

Nine Hours, a chain of 13 hotels across Japan, from Fukuoka in the west to the north-east island of Hokkaido, has an unusual by-product: sleep data. In the Shinagawa Station (men only) and Akasaka branches, guests can sign up for a "9h sleep fitscan" service, where sensors detect everything from breathing to facial expressions to generate a sleep report that tracks their heart rate, identifies sleep apnea and even monitors snoring. In a sector where a novel or low-budget stay is often prioritised over comfort, Nine Hours' interest in how well its guests are sleeping sets it apart.

Across the franchise, the white, minimalist decor continues this clinical theme, while its rows of sleek, shiny sleeping pods would not look out of place on the set of a science-fiction movie. The name refers to the hotel's cost-cutting concept that reduces room rental to the essential nine hours, allowing seven hours for sleep and an hour on either side for washing and dressing. Just need a nap? Hourly rates are also available.

Climb to the sky

A night in a transparent sleeping pod clinging to a cliff face above Peru's Sacred Valley is not everyone's idea of a relaxing stay, but for adrenaline-lovers, it's hard to beat – not least for the incredible 300-degree views of the surrounding mountains and the formidable condors that inhabit them.

A near-vertical climb of 400m is the only way to reach the Skylodge Adventure Suites, but climbing experience is not necessary – only good health and a head for heights – and descending is speedier thanks to a series of zip wires. Each capsule includes a private bathroom ensuring that night trips to the toilet are not life-threatening, and when the sun rises, you can enjoy a cup of tea on your private deck. Looking for a little more luxury? A little further down the Urubamba river, sister site, Starlodge, adds hillside hot tubs to the capsule hotel experience.

A desert oasis

The Tubo Hotel, La Tatacoa is just a 10-minute drive from Colombia's second-largest desert, the eponymous Tatacoa, famous for its clear starry skies. When you've taken in the giant cacti and curious rock formations of the Tatacoa's cinnamon-coloured sands, this rainbow of tiny, air-conditioned rooms with a shared swimming pool offers a welcome oasis. The 37 capsules are fashioned from concrete sewer pipes painted in candy colours, providing just enough room for a double bed. Almost half of the rooms have a shared bathroom, but the room rate is a snip and you've a shady garden, bar and restaurant on your doorstep. "This innovative and colourful place offers you a unique experience," says Ambar Quintana, the hotel's administrator. "It has everything you need to rest in a natural environment of fresh air and vegetation."

Immerse in nature

Suspended among the conifers like oversized Christmas baubles, the Free Spirit Spheres on Vancouver Island, Canada, feel "like you are floating in the canopy among the sleeping birds", according to owner Tom Chudleigh. The first sphere was introduced 25 years ago, driven by a desire to promote ecotourism and preserve Canada's ancient forests.

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There are currently three spheres, each based on the principle of biomimicry and shaped with a giant seed pod or nutshell in mind: light but with a strong shell. "Eryn" is fashioned from Sitka spruce and has a dining area, sink and slightly undersized double bed inside; while more recent additions, "Melody" and "Luna", are fibreglass and have similar amenities but with full-size double beds that can be stowed. Each sphere is accessed via a spiral staircase wrapped around a tree, and is available to rent in temperatures as low as -20C, when even a trip to the composting toilet at the accommodation's base will feel intrepid.

The shape makes bespoke fittings a prerequisite, and every little detail has been meticulously crafted by Chudleigh, from walnut fold-out furniture that maximises the space, to door handles cast from bronze.

Small but soothing

Inside a Brutalist building in Singapore's Chinatown lies a surprisingly serene interior. Opened in 2021 and based on an aesthetic it describes as "soft minimalist", KINN Capsule offers a Zen take on the capsule concept with walls painted in calming peachy tones and pale wood sleeping chambers fitted with crisp white bed linen. Even the smell of the place seems an antidote to its urban location as a special house fragrance designed to evoke the wildflowers of a Nordic forest hangs in the air. There are 72 capsules in total, sealed off with blackout blinds and spread across seven rooms, but the vibe is more boutique than bunkhouse.

A book at bedtime

A traditional mud and wood farmhouse in eastern China's Zhejiang Province got a prize-winning makeover in 2019 when it reopened as a capsule hostel, bookstore and community library, sleeping 20 in tiny single bed-sized compartments concealed between bookshelves made of local bamboo. A smattering of small landings are connected by zigzagging stairways that recall the serpentine paths of the surrounding forests of Tonglu. It's hard to know which is more dramatic: the remote building's transparent floor-to-ceiling panels that light it up like a cathedral at night, or the lush mountainous scenery that's visible through them.

Cupboard love

In Oud Zuid, one of Amsterdam's most upscale neighbourhoods, guests are paying to sleep in cupboards. The quirky De Bedstee Hotel draws on the 17th-Century tradition of the Dutch bedstee (box bed), a bed concealed behind cupboard doors to create a cosy sleeping nook. The hotel's Art Deco features and acid-coloured wallpapers downstairs give way to a shabby-chic design in the first-floor dormitories, where the bedstee windows are framed by red gingham curtains and little wooden ladders lead to the capsules above. Relax in the hotel's small terrace garden or take a half-hour stroll to the Rembrandt House Museum in the city centre to see several historic box beds in situ.

Pristine and comparatively posh

Another hotel with a signature smell is the Resol Poshtel in Tokyo's Asakusa district – the Resol Hotel chain's first venture into capsule sleeping. The aroma, which includes orange, chamomile and neroli, is said to induce "a feeling of gentle calm" – of benefit, perhaps, given the communal sleeping arrangements. At bedtime, there's nothing but a curtain between you and fellow visitors, but few one-star establishments can match this hotel's cleanliness and functionality, with hairbrushes, slippers and razors included in the freebies. The Edo-era styling − such as the sleeping cubicles' arched entrance reminiscent of tea ceremony rooms, and the traditional Japanese murals surrounding the bed − add a hint of heritage to the hotel's modern lines. The city's oldest Buddhist temple, Sensō-ji, is a five-minute walk away, as is the lantern-lined Nakamise-dori street, home to a parade of colourful shops selling souvenirs and street food.

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Five of Montreal's best poutine spots - according to a local chef

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241112-montreals-best-poutine-according-to-a-local-chef, today

Montreal-born chef Michele Forgione makes one of the best poutines in the city. Here are his top poutine picks in Montreal, from Chez Ma Tante to Ma Poulle Mouillée.

Piping-hot French fries topped with squeaky cheese curds and brown gravy: in Canada's Quebec province, poutine is tantamount to passion. The beloved dish has become emblematic of the province and opinions abound on which curds make the best topping or how the frying method affects the dish.

Legends about its origins are also plentiful. In a 2015 tourism campaign, the town of Drummondville, Quebec, claimed ownership of poutine, declaring that it was invented in the 1960s by self-proclaimed "l'inventeur de la poutine" Jean-Paul Roy of local restaurant Le Roy Jucep. Another legend states that a customer mixed cheese curds with French fries at restaurant La P'tite Vache in Princeville, Quebec in 1966. But the most prevailing legend points to the town of Warwick, Quebec, in the late 1950s, when restauranteur Fernand Lachance of Le Café Idéal exclaimed "Ca va faire une maudite poutine!" ("It will make a damn mess!") when a customer asked him to put cheese curds in a takeaway bag of frites.

In Montreal, Quebec's largest city, poutine can take many forms. Since the invention of poutineries (poutine-only restaurants) in the 1980s, poutine has become a vehicle for an endless range of toppings, representing the great cultural diversity of the city itself, as many of the city's ethnic groups offer their own takes on the dish.

To find the city's most delicious poutine, we spoke to Michele Forgione, restaurateur and owner of modern Montreal casse-croûte (Quebecois snack bar) Chez Tousignant, whose poutine is often touted as one of Montreal's best. "I truly believe that the culinary heritage that every single ethnicity brings to the city is very important," he says. "Montreal is a melting pot, and one can really travel through different cultures through its food. That to me is so unique." But no matter what goes on top of a poutine – from Portuguese chicken to Haitian griot (pork shoulder) – there are three non-negotiable elements: French fries made from red skin potatoes, dark gravy made from chicken or beef stock and fresh cheese curds. "Not mozzarella!" says Forgione.

Here are Forgione's top poutines in his hometown of Montreal.

1. Best classic poutine: Chez Ma Tante

For a proper introduction to Montreal's poutine scene, Chez Ma Tante – a casse-croûte in Montreal Nord – is it. Their take on the dish is the "quintessential, classic poutine", says Forgione. What makes it a classic? It's all in the fries – using red skin potatoes means that the fries "will never get too crunchy. They can't – they have a higher starch content." The frying technique is also key: the potatoes must be double fried, first on a lower heat setting – around 138C – and then again, 38C hotter says Forgione. "You're getting the outside super golden. It's like a tempura batter. You just want to eat it more; it becomes addictive."

Chez Ma Tante started life as a mobile restaurant in 1929 (first in a horse-drawn carriage, then in a campervan). In 1950, the establishment built a permanent home on Rue Fleury and has been there ever since, with minimal changes to the decor or exterior. "It's the classic diner. There's no seating, really – it's an in-and-out situation," says Forgione. He also recommends a steamé, their famous steamed hot dog. "It's one of those places where you know you can have a steamed hot dog and a poutine and that's it, that's all you want."

Website: https://chezmatante.ca/

Address: 3180 Rue Fleury E, Montréal-Nord, Quebec H1H 2R3

Phone number: +1 514-387-6984

Instagram: @chez.ma.tante

2. Best for a Portuguese twist: Ma Poulle Mouillée

Situated in Montreal's colourful Plateau neighbourhood – lined with brightly painted townhouses bedecked with characteristic outdoor staircases – Ma Poule Mouillée is a local favourite and a prime example of fusion cuisine. This counter-service Portuguese restaurant is famous for its flame-licked chicken, which also tops their chorizo-studded poutine that has since become legendary for melding two iconic dishes.

"It's like a meal," says Forgione. "[The chicken is] juicy, it's tender, it's moist. It just goes together. You're accustomed to all the flavours, but it's served in a different way. It's basically chicken salad! That's how I see it."

The restaurant's signature sauce mingles with the gravy and gives the dish "a little heat", says Forgione. "It all just goes together." What exactly is in the sauce is a closely guarded secret – owner Tony Alves, who opened the restaurant in 2013, will only concede that he uses piri piri peppers. Thanks to Montreal's sizable Portuguese population, there are several restaurants in town specialising in the country's famously fiery rotisserie bird (including down-the-street Romados), but the chicken-poutine hybrid is a Ma Poulle Mouillée special.

Address: 969 Rachel St E, Montreal, Quebec H2J 2J2

Phone number: +1 514-522-5175

Instagram: @mapoullemouillee

3. Best for high-end poutine: Au Pied de Cochon

Au Pied de Couchon, also in the Plateau neighbourhood, is without a doubt one of Montreal's most beloved restaurants; the brainchild of legendary Canadian chef Martin Picard. "[He's] a good friend," says Forgione. "He's one of the top chefs in Canada, if not North America."

Since it opened in 2001, the restaurant has championed Quebecois food. Twenty-five years ago, the province's cuisine was rarely taken seriously by the city's chefs, who preferred elaborate French techniques to the homey, lard-soaked dishes of French Canada. Picard created a sea-change in local attitudes by presenting humble, traditional Quebecois ingredients and flavours in new and surprising formats – like their famous Plogue à Champlain, a buckwheat pancake piled with melted cheese, roasted potatoes, bacon, demi-glace and a drizzle of maple syrup.

And no dish is more representative of Picard's cooking style than Au Pied de Cochon's foie gras poutine. It's a cult favourite across the city for its irresistible high-low approach, which pairs a classic poutine with a custardy sauce made from duck or goose liver. Forgione is particularly fond of it. "The French fries are super crispy, very addictive," he says. "The foie gras sauce is unctuous, decadent. It's on another level. And the cheese curds are just squick-squick. That taste when they're fresh, you know what I mean?"

Website: www.aupieddecochon.ca

Address: 536 Av. Duluth E, Montréal, Quebec, H2L 1A9

Instagram: @restaurantaupieddecochon

4. Best for late nights: La Banquise

Ask any Montrealer where to try poutine and most will suggest La Banquise. This local institution has been around since 1968 and serves an expansive menu of creatively topped poutines, as well as burgers, hot dogs and brunch. It's also open 24 hours a day, making it the preferred post-party stop after a night at the city's famous clubs and bars. 

Forgione remembers several of his own poutine-fuelled nights here. "You're a kid, you're in your teens, 20s… after going out with your friends until 03:00, 04:00 in the morning, you'll [have] burn[ed] the calories."

His favourite is La Galvaude, a version of the classic poutine topped with grilled chicken and green peas, or "anything with hot dogs on top". There are also vegetarian and vegan poutines on the menu; a relative rarity.

Website: https://labanquise.com/

Address: 994 Rue Rachel E, Montréal, Quebec H2J 2J3

Phone number: +1 514-525-2415

Instagram: @restolabanquise

5. Best for a two-in-one classic: Jarry Smoked Meat

There's another dish no visitor should leave Montreal without trying: smoked meat. The city's signature deli meat is a cousin to New York's pastrami, and it's served atop poutine at Jarry Smoked Meat, a deli in the north-eastern Saint-Leonard neighbourhood. Forgione grew up nearby – where "all the Italians" live, he quips – and remembers many evenings spent in the classic diner, eating poutine topped with strips of brisket that's been dry rubbed rather than brined, giving it a stringier, softer texture than New York's fattier navel cut.

Both brisket and smoked meat come from Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who applied traditional techniques for preserving meat to North American beef. "It was a method of feeding the masses," says Forgione. "It was cheap cuts of meat. Don't look at brisket today, whose costs have gone through the roof. It was a cut of meat nobody want[ed] because what do you do with a tough, tough piece of meat? You had to know what you were doing, and they brought so much knowledge."

Smoked meat is most often served between two slices of rye bread, and Jarry does serve a smoke meat sandwich as well. But their smoked meat poutine is the ultimate indulgence, says Forgione. "It's beefy, it's salty, it's sweet a little, it's smoky," he enthuses. "It's the ultra-decadent food. Merging these two iconic dishes from Montreal [is] euphoric. It's like Metallica playing Mozart at [Montreal performance venue] Place-des-Arts."

Website: www.jarrysmokedmeat.com

Address: 6549 Rue Jarry E, Saint-Léonard, Quebec H1P 1W2

Phone number: +1 514-322-3220

Instagram: @jarry_smoked_meat

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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A two-Michelin-star chef's guide to the best dining spots in Istanbul

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241112-a-two-michelin-star-chefs-guide-to-the-best-dining-spots-in-istanbul, today

Istanbul-born chef Fatih Tutak shares his favourite culinary experiences in his hometown, from Turkish barbecue at Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı to micro-seasonal menus at Nazende.

Straddling two continents, Istanbul has been shaped by millennia of Silk Road traders and the meeting of great religions. From the Byzantines to the Ottomans, each of the city's historical inhabitants have left behind impressive architecture, unique cultural traditions and a rich culinary legacy. 

"Turkish cuisine is an undiscovered diamond mine," says chef Fatih Tutak of two-Michelin-star Turk in Istanbul. "In the early '90s, Turkish food became very much [seen as] street food, especially in Europe. [There], you can make a very bad quality döner kebab and no one [knows]. Turkish food is not very easy to cook properly. It's complex. [In Istanbul] we have many different people from around Turkey and they cook their own cuisine. It's a melting pot."

At Turk, Tutak gives age-old Turkish recipes a cutting-edge spin. However, when he's not in the kitchen, he prefers something lower key. "As a chef I am very specific when I go to restaurants in Turkey, especially in Istanbul," he explains. "I try to always go very local and where the food is ultimately high quality, prepared with amazing ingredients."

A year-round destination with warm summers and cool winters, the city topped Euromonitor's list as the most visited city in the world in 2023, so there's never been a better time to dive into Istanbul's excellent culinary scene.

Here are Tutak's favourite dining spots in his hometown.

1. Best for Turkish barbecue: Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı

Visitors to Istanbul will likely notice the word "ocakbaşı" plastered on restaurant signage everywhere. It means "fireside" in Turkish, and is the name given to grill houses where a chef cooks kebabs on glowing hot coals. It is one of the most popular ways to dine in the city, and for Tutak, Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı is the best in the business. 

 

"This is where I go on my days off," he says. "[They have] an artisanal way of making kebabs; hand chopped, with different varieties of meat cuts. They do the best minced kebab and shish kebab, and also chicken wings and salad and grilled veggies and lavash (thin flatbread).

For Tutak, it's not just about the food but also the experience. "Chef Ahmet has been doing this job for almost 20 years. He is very passionate," he says. "You sit down in front of the grill and he is there cooking in front of you; like Japanese robatayaki. Also, you can drink rakı [a Turkish aniseed flavoured spirit] because the best way of enjoying the kebab, for me, is [with] rakı: the Turkish way."

Tutak's advice: "You should not leave without eating the Adana kebab," which he proclaims to be "the best in the city". Possibly Turkey's most popular variety of kebab, it's made from skewered mincemeat and seasoned with red pepper flakes for mild heat and named after the city of Adana in south-eastern Turkey, where it originates from.

Address: Maslak Mah. Dereboyu 2 Cad. No:8/1, Istanbul

Phone: +90 53 0175 6114

Instagram: @ahmetustamocakbasi

2. Best for pide: Karadeni̇z Pi̇de Kebap Salonu

Pide can be found all over Turkey, but according to Tutak, this canoe-shaped dish – often referred to as "Turkish pizza" by tourists, much to the locals' chagrin – originates from the province of Trabzon on the northern reaches of the country's Black Sea coast. There are various versions and regional variations, but in its simplest form, yeasted dough is stuffed with different fillings like cheese and meat, then baked, resulting in a pillowy soft crust with golden edges covered in melted cheese.

Located in the central neighbourhood of Vefa, just a 10-minute walk from the famed 16th-Century Suleymaniye Mosque, is Karadeni̇z Pi̇de Kebap Salonu; Tutak's pick for the city's best pide. "This restaurant is very special because they are the third generation preparing pide. They are famous for [it]," he says.

Tutak appreciates the family-run restaurant's dedication to tradition. "They use a woodfired oven and make their own very nice fermented dough and use different kinds of stuffing. You can order cheese, minced meat, chopped beef, cheese and egg. It's very special," he says, adding: "my favourite is with minced beef."

Address: Hacı Kadın, Muhabir Sk. No:6, 34134 Fatih/İstanbul

Phone: +90 21 2519 0128

3. Best for micro-seasonal menus: Nazende

At the helm of Nazende, a Mediterranean restaurant just off upscale boulevard Bağdat Caddesi, is snowy-haired businessman-turned-chef, Uluç Sakary. "This is my favourite restaurant in Turkey," announces Tutak. "Uluç used to have a textiles business. He used to cook at home for his friends and then when [he turned] 50, he decided to become a chef and open a restaurant."

Nazende – which opened in 2019 – quickly garnered critical acclaim and is full most evenings. "He does his own shopping every morning. He goes to the fish and vegetable markets and makes his daily menu and just [cooks] whatever he wants, but it's out of this world," says Tutak. "The variety of meat dishes [is] amazing. [They have] amazing offal dishes on the grill such as lamb liver, sweetbread and kidney. They have seafood, they also have great starters, mezes and salads."

For diners visiting in April or May (goat season) Tutak recommends the woodfire oven-baked suckling goat, a meat eaten widely in Turkey. The restaurant is also lauded for its baby calamari and rice pilaf enriched with nuts and raisins.

Address: Caddebostan Plajyolu Sok. Sembol apt. No:13/A, Istanbul

Phone: +90 533 6170 268 

Instagram: @nazendecadde

4. Best for local fare: Köroğlu Et Lokantası

Lokantas or "tradesmen restaurants" are where time-strapped locals head for well-priced and freshly prepared home-style dishes. They are found all over Turkey but Tutak's favourite in Istanbul is Köroğlu Et Lokantası. "When you enter the restaurant there are a lot of dishes already cooked; you select [what you want] and they send it to you," he says. "They open only for lunchtime, so you need to go around 12:30."

The menu is ample, but there are some dishes the restaurant is especially known for. "They cook amazing beans with rice called fasulye – a very typical local dish, which is braised beans from Ispir (in north-eastern Turkey) with butter and beef," says Tutak. "Also, the eggplant dishes are amazing. I would say confit beef is their signature. It is very traditional from the northern part of Turkey. You leave the beef for six hours [to] cook very slowly. Amazing. Served just with plain rice and fried potatoes; easy."

Address: Akşemsettin Caddesi No:4 Fatih/İSTANBUL, Istanbul

Phone: +90 212 531 23 05

Instagram: @koroglu_lokantasi_

5. Best for döner kebabs: Dönerci Engin

One of Turkey's most famed exports, the döner kebab (seasoned meat cooked on a rotating spit then shaved off in layers) can be found in abundance all over Istanbul, from hole-in-the-wall joints purveyed by solo chefs armed with just a vertical rotating meat spit, to sit-down establishments with bowtie-wearing waiters.

Dönerci Engin, a five-minute walk from the Galata Tower, leans more towards the former, with the addition of a few tables outside. "[The chef] is from [my mother's] hometown Erzurum," says Tutak. "He prepares the doner with a mix of sliced beef and lamb and he has a special marinade using tomato, purple basil and onion and milled black pepper. The quality of the döner kebab is very thin, very juicy and really caramelised. Just the perfect doner."

There are only five items on the menu, which consist of doner meat served in various receptacles. Essentially "on a plate or inside bread," says Tutak. "I like it my way, with white rice and sliced onion and meat and that's it. No garnish, just rice." For bread eaters, he recommends the gobit pita: "It's like a balloon pita, wood-fired. He makes his own."

Address: Bereketzade, Okçu Musa Cd. No:3, 34421 Beyoğlu/İstanbul

Phone: +90 212 293 9787

6. Best Turkish taverna: Asmali Cavit

The lively Asmalı Mescit neighbourhood in Istanbul's central Beyoğlu district is a crisscross of narrow streets filled with bustling bars and restaurants, particularly traditional tavernas. "[A] Turkish taverna is the place where you go for drinking and eating. They have them in Greece as well," explains the chef. "We call it meyhane; taverna is a Greek name. This is where people gather and enjoy meze, small dishes, seafood and alcoholic beverages, especially rakı."

The chef is a long-time fan of Asmali Cavit. "[It] is a beautiful place run by a family: the father, mother, son and daughter. Every day, they're on duty and [have been] running the place for almost 25 years," says Tutak. "It's in a touristy area but mostly local people go. It's mostly shared dishes, cooked with olive oil, and seafood appetisers: fried calamari, squid, grilled fish, mussels – and also cured seafood."

Seafood isn't the only thing on the menu. "The baby kofta grill is amazing," says Tutak. "The fried beef liver is also very nice. Also, Armenian mezes, like topik, a dish cooked with a lot of onions and chickpeas."

Address: Asmalımescit Caddesi No: 16/D Asmalimescit Mahallesi, Beyoglu, İstanbul 34430

Phone: +90 212 292 4950

7. Best for fish: Balikci Kahraman

Tutak compares Balikci Kahraman to the renowned Michelin-starred Elkano fish grill in Spain. "It's the Turkish version," he says.

In fish-loving Istanbul, Black Sea turbot is beloved for its flavoursome and meaty texture, thanks to cold water currents. "Balikci Kahraman is very famous for its turbot," says Tutak. "They cook it on a tandoor grill very slowly and season it with salt. They serve it with their signature tomato salad (with red onion, cucumber, green chilli and lashings of olive oil) and cornbread which is cooked in a pan."

The restaurant is located on the city's outskirts in the small fishing village of Sarıyer on the banks near where the Black Sea flows into the Bosphurus River. "The owner has two boats. He sends his fishermen to the sea every morning, they catch it and bring it to the restaurant. It's super fresh."

Diners will need to factor in the journey time. "It is about one hour from the city centre but worth it to travel there. I just took my Japanese sushi chef friends from Tokyo who loved it," says Tutak.

Website: https://www.balikcikahraman.com/

Address: Rumeli Kavağı, İskele Cad. No:15 Sarıyer, İstanbul

Phone: +90 212 242 98 99

Instagram: @balikcikahraman

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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A dancer's guide to Seville's best flamenco experiences

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241107-a-flamenco-dancers-guide-to-seville, today

Manuela Barrios has performed flamenco around the world. Here are her favourite spots in Seville to see the spectacle, from casual nights at La Carbonería to the cabaret shows of Tablao Las Setas.

Seville, the capital of Spain's Andalusia region, is known for its tiled Moorish architecture, colourful 19th-Century facades and the thousands of fragrant orange trees lining its streets. This romantic city is also often called the "birthplace of flamenco".

Flamenco is characterised by rhythmic dancing accompanied by guitar, singing or poetry, hand clapping and finger snapping. It has a mournful folk quality and is ruled by duende, an expressive emotion which most closely translates to "spirit" or "soul".

Many scholars trace flamenco's origin to Triana, a neighbourhood on the banks of the Guadalquivir River. The area was historically home to Seville's Roma (Gypsy) minority who migrated to Spain from India in the Middle Ages, bringing along instruments like tambourines and castanets. Because the dance was connected with the marginalised Roma and working-class and minority communities like the Moors, it was looked down upon by Spanish elites. But today, tourism and modernisation have changed this perception drastically, and flamenco has become popularised as a quintessential symbol of Andalusia and Spain.

We spoke to Manuela Barrios, a Seville-based professional flamenco dancer, to find the city's best flamenco experiences. "We have the best flamenco artists in the world here in Seville," says Barrios. "It's a small city, but they haven't lost their traditions." Seville’s many tablaos (flamenco venues) offer theatre-style shows on a daily basis. Outside of formal performances, flamenco is also an important part of public life in the city. Street performers often dance in squares such as the city's central Plaza de España, and in traditional neighbourhoods like Triana. Flamenco singing and guitar can also be heard from the windows of local bars and features prominently in Seville’s Feria de Abril (April Fair), where locals show off their dancing skills with informal styles such as Sevillanas.

Seville's vibrant professional flamenco scene has a tight community spirit. "People are very empathetic and willing to help, and there's a family-oriented culture. Especially with the [Roma] artists," says Barrios. "They're amazing. They bring their whole family to dance and perform."

Here are five of Barrios' favourite spots to experience this Andalusian art form.

1. Best fun, casual night out: La Carbonería

For an affordable introduction to flamenco, this casual bar nestled between the trendy nightlife hub of Alfalfa and the historic district of Barrio Santa Cruz is a solid choice.

"La Carbonería is a place that has a lot of solera (tradition)," says Barrios. "It's a very fun place and has kept the same vibe for so many years. You just have to pay for your drink and you can see flamenco, with singing and everything."

In a bustling wide room with simple wooden tables and long benches, guests can watch the performance in a relaxed atmosphere. "All the really good guitarists and singers started in La Carbonería," says Barrios. "It's a place where talented artists get their first performing experience."

Entrance to La Carbonería is free, but you can buy drinks and tapas onsite – note that payment is cash only. Food and drink options include pitchers of sangria, plus simple tapas like cheese, olives, chorizo, picos (crunchy breadsticks) and Spanish omelette.

Website: https://lacarbonerialevies.blogspot.com/

Address: Calle Céspedes 21A, 41004, Seville

Phone: +34 954 229 945

Instagram: @carboneriadesevilla

2. Best off-the-beaten-path experience: Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena

Just outside the old city's medieval walls, near the modern steel bowstring Barqueta Bridge, you'll find the Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena.

A "peña flamenca" is a club or cultural association where aficionados can enjoy flamenco-related events. "If you want to see something not very touristy, this is the place to go," says Barrios. "The entrance is much cheaper than a tablao, but you don't know what you're going to see – it may be stars or amateurs."

The Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena opens 60-90 minutes before each show, and shows are typically held three times per week. The venue has a traditional Andalusian tiled patio where visitors can enjoy drinks and tapas beforehand. Although performances are open to the public, the first two rows are usually reserved for club members, and payment is generally cash only.

Website: https://www.xn--peaflamencatorresmacarena-9nc.com/

Address: Calle Torrijiano 29, 41009, Seville

Phone: +34 605 931 254

Instagram: @pflamencatorresmacarena

3. Best cabaret-style theatre show with top stars: Tablao Flamenco Las Setas

Beneath the iconic modern building of the same name, visitors will find the Tablao Flamenco Las Setas. "This tablao is one of the top places in Spain. They bring all the best flamenco stars," says Barrios. "For example, [famed flamenco star] Belén López was there yesterday, and she's never come to Andalusia to dance before. They have high-quality shows, and the owners have a lot of taste."

Las Setas (The Mushrooms), also known as Metropol Parasol, is widely considered the largest wooden structure in the world and is a famous symbol of Seville. Besides the flamenco tablao, the building is also home to a Roman site known as the Antiquarium, as well as the Mercado de la Encarnación (Incarnation Market), which sells fresh meat, vegetables and seafood.

Tablao Flamenco Las Setas accommodates 110 people but still offers an intimate atmosphere, according to Barrios. "People leave in tears every night. You can see the show really close up, and flamenco needs to be seen close up because you have to observe the facial expressions, the pain and emotion."

Visitors to this tablao will be treated to a cabaret-style spectacle that captures the most dramatic side of flamenco. "It's a different atmosphere than any other tablao in Seville. They don't just have lunares y flores (polka dots and flowers). They want to add a bit of a cabaret taste, something different, with lace and other unique styles."

Website: https://tablaoflamencolassetas.com/

Address: Plaza de la Encarnación, Pasaje de Las Setas, 41003, Seville

Phone: +34 684 776 981

Instagram: @tablaoflamencolassetas

4. Best traditional flamenco with dinner: Tablao Flamenco El Arenal

Located in a building dating to the 17th Century, Tablao Flamenco El Arenal features a grand white dining hall flanked with wooden beams, where you can savour a meal before enjoying a flamenco show. "This is one of the oldest tablaos in Seville," says Barrios. "If you want to see cuadros de flamenco (flamenco groups) and have dinner, you can come here to see very good stars perform in a very traditional way."

Located right in the centre of Seville's old city, near the Seville Cathedral and the University of Seville campus, this tablao has been operating for more than 40 years. Visitors can choose from ticket options that include a drink, tapas or a multi-course meal. 

"To see a full flamenco cuadro where you have four dancers, three singers and two guitarists… that's really amazing," says Barrios. "For a first taste of flamenco, it's very impressive. They have shows every day, and you should buy tickets online, because they're sold out almost every day in the high season [April - May, September - October]."

Website: https://tablaoelarenal.com/

Address: Calle Rodo 7, 41001, Seville

Phone: +34 954 216 492

Instagram: @tablaoelarenalsevilla

5. Best tertulias flamencas: Ánima Galería Taberna

The word tertulia means "conversation" in Spanish, but in the context of flamenco it's more like a jam session. At these informal meetings, musicians and dancers gather for a spontaneous performance.

Ánima Galería Taberna, situated near Seville's bohemian Alameda de Hércules square, hosts flamenco tertulias every Wednesday and Saturday night. "You can see locals and foreigners singing and playing guitar," says Barrios. "You never know exactly what's going to happen. The bar is very authentic and has a beautiful terrace. My students say this is the best place for tertulias, because you can go there and feel the atmosphere."

Website: https://animataberna.wordpress.com/

Address: Calle Miguel del Cid 80, 41002, Seville

Phone: +34 954 386 708

Instagram: @galeriataberna_anima

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A Oaxacan chef's guide to the best of Oaxaca City's street food

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241101-a-oaxacan-chefs-guide-to-the-best-of-oaxaca-citys-street-food, today

Chef Alejandro Ruiz thinks Oaxaca's street foods are a key to understanding its gastronomy. Here are his top street foods in the city, from memelas at Doña Vale to Tacos del Carmen.

Mexico is renowned for its deeply regional cuisine, and the state of Oaxaca is home to what is widely considered some of its best. High in the Sierra Madre mountains upon a dusty plateau, Oaxaca City's Spanish Baroque cathedrals loom over low blocks of brightly coloured buildings lining cobblestoned streets; splashed by vivid murals and renderings of mythological and historical figures. Everywhere, a bouquet of savoury aromas and smoke waft from open kitchen windows and street carts.

"I think what makes Oaxacan food different compared to other food regions is the enormous variety of microclimates," says Oaxaca-born chef Alejandro Ruiz, who has been championing his home state's native cuisine for nearly 30 years. "We work with what's available. If I have lemon trees, I make fresh agua fresca de limón (fresh lemonade). If I have corn and beans and chillies, that's what I eat."

Ruiz further explains that Oaxacan cuisine is a heady blend of Spanish, African Moorish and Indigenous techniques: "Also there's Asian influence, like cumin, cinnamon and other spices. But to me the Indigenous [influence] is the most important."

Though his restaurant Casa Oaxaca El Restaurante is upscale, Chef Ruiz adores Oaxaca's iconic street foods, like tlayudas (thin, crispy tortillas smothered in beans, meats, salsa and cheese) and memelas (grilled corn cakes). "[It's] special because it has the main ingredients of our local diet: corn, beans, salsas and stuffings like meat, sausage, herbs called quelites," he says. "There is always a comal" – the Mexican griddle that crisps dough to perfection – "and there is always freshly made tortilla. If you have a good tortilla, beans and salsa, that's all you need to have an amazing taco, tostada, tlayuda, or memela."

Earlier this year, the new 104km Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway opened between Oaxaca City and Puerto Escondido, slashing the drive from eight nausea-inducing hours to a quick 2.5, so there's no time like the present to try Oaxaca's amazing cuisine. Here are Ruiz's top five street foods in Oaxaca City.

1. Best for bustle: Oaxaca's mercados

"One of the main reasons people come to Oaxaca is to eat," says Ruiz, "and I think they should visit the market (mercado) if they’re interested in food."

In the centre of the city, the neighbouring mercados 20 de Noviembre and Benito Juarez as well as the nearby Central de Abasto are popular among both locals and visitors, offering scores of food stall options amidst a bevy of handicraft shopping. A kaleidoscope of tropical fruit abounds punctuated by barrels of fried grasshoppers called chapulines; stands offer street foods ranging from tacos and Oaxacan-style barbeque to tlayudas and tamales Oaxaqueños (corn husk-wrapped corn tamales laced with sweet and savoury Oaxacan-style mole sauce, made with bitter chocolate). Everything gets washed down with a mug of the state's renowned hot chocolate and coffee, both packaged and prepared fresh. Even with so many delicious options, Ruiz is particularly emphatic that visitors try the barbecue, where they'll choose from a selection of thin-cut beef or chorizo sausages that are grilled to order, as a billow of mouth-watering smoke perfumes the dining area.

In addition to the local markets, Ruiz advises taking a short jaunt out of town to the markets in the neighbouring city of Tlacolula, where you "grill your own tasajo and chorizo right there on the charcoal grills – it's an amazing experience".

Website: https://mercado-20-de-noviembre.webnode.mx/

Address: 20 De Noviembre 512, Centro, 68000, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico

2. Best for tacos: Tacos del Carmen

Located a block down from Oaxaca's botanical garden, Tacos del Carmen is beloved by locals. This unassuming stand's offerings are cooked under a comal, yielding a crispy tortilla with melted cheese on the inside along with ingredients like mushrooms, chorizo, beans, fried pork belly (called chicharron) and the day's selection of meats.

Centrally located alongside the garden near several of the city's most historical cathedrals like Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzman and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and tucked amidst many of its excellent art galleries, Tacos del Carmen has become an increasingly popular stop among visitors. The stand is closed by 15:00, so plan it as an afternoon fuel-up as you wander the city, and keep in mind that it's not open Wednesday or Sunday. The menu is in both Spanish and English, so no worries about language difficulties. It is cash-only, so come prepared.

"I recommend ordering the tacos de chile relleno (stuffed pepper) with chorizo and quesillo (egg custard)," says Ruiz. "It’s so rich and so delicious – the best in town."

Address: Jesús Carranza 110, Ruta Independencia, Centro, 68000, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico

Instagram: @carmentacosdel

3. Best for tlayudas: Tlayudas Doña Tere

One of Oaxaca's most iconic dishes is the tlayuda – a crunchy, thin tortilla topped with a base of refried beans, then covered with cheese and toppings like avocado and vegetable.

According to Ruiz, "Everyone in Oaxaca has their own favourite place for tlayudas. Mine is Tlayudas Doña Tere right around the corner from my home. The way she makes it is on charcoal, in between the comal and the charcoal, so it's crispy and the cheese gets melted immediately. I love it."

Tlayudas Doña Tere is a 10-minute drive south-east of Oaxaca's downtown in the quiet, residential University district. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it spot – the perfect opportunity to get away from the bustle of the city centre and enjoy a tasty bite away from the tourist crowds.

Address: Escuela naval militar Esquina Dallas Col. Reforma

4. Best for memelas: Memelas Doña Vale

A cousin to both the taco and the tlayuda, memelas are thick, grilled cornmeal cakes topped with cheese, salsa and toppings like tomato, onion or peppers; a Oaxaca City staple. Ruiz is definitive on the city's best: Memelas Doña Vale, a stand run by memela maker Doña Vale in the market at Central de Abasto. "Doña Vale only makes memelas," he says. "And "[customers have the] option of topping them with a couple of eggs, confit porridge or tasajo (thinly cut, dried and spiced beef) grilled on the charcoal, chocolate de agua (hot chocolate mixed with water) or café de olla ("pot coffee" typically simmered in clay pot) to drink – only five options, no more. I love these kinds of places."

Plan on stopping by during shopping break and bring cash. This popular spot gets busy around lunchtime, which is no surprise as Doña Vale has been grilling memelas for 40 years.

Address: Cosijoeza, Central de Abasto, 68090, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oax., Mexico

Instagram: @memelasdonavale

5.  Best for a snack: Empanadas del Carmen

Yet another "must" while visiting Oaxaca are "empanadas de amarillo" (yellow empanadas). These savoury bites are made with corn dough and stuffed with chicken and Oaxaca's yellow mole, a silky golden sauce stewed with tomatillos, hoja santa (Mexican pepperleaf) and vegetables like green beans and potatoes. Flaky on the outside with an explosion of rich mole flavour within, empanadas de Amarillo are ideal for fortifying your stomach after a long day of mezcals and cervezas.

At Empanadas del Carmen, says Ruiz, "They’re made right in front of you, and they are the best in town – cheap and delicious." The stand is open every day but Wednesday from 17:00-23:00, and as they're located right in the heart of the central district, they're a convenient place to stop off for a snack while exploring the city.

"Have a meal in a fine dining restaurant, a meal on the street, and a meal in the market," Ruiz recommends. "This way you learn about the full culinary traditions in Oaxaca."

Address: Jesús Carranza 102, Ruta Independencia, Centro, 68000, Oax., Mexico

Instagram: @empanadasdelcarmenalto

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A Scotch whisky lover's guide to Edinburgh and beyond

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241029-a-scotch-whisky-lovers-guide-to-edinburgh, today

Author Charlie MacLean has made a life out of rating Scotch whisky. Here are his favourite ways to enjoy a dram, from cosy city pubs in Edinburgh to Victorian hotels in the Highlands.

Edinburgh, Scotland's cosmopolitan capital, is brimming with Unesco cache. Both its architecturally splendid medieval Old Town and Neoclassical New Town are World Heritage sites, while Edinburgh itself was named the world's first City of Literature in 2004.

Overseas, Edinburgh is equally as revered for its whisky culture. There are more than 385 pubs in the city where you can savour the peat-flavoured drink right in its country of origin.

"It's growing," says esteemed scotch writer Charles "Charlie" MacLean. "A lot of bars have expanded the range of whiskies and the knowledge on part of the bar staff in order to be able to advise customers. So Edinburgh has become a hub."

 

 

For MacLean, the enduring global appeal of Scotch whisky owes much to "fashion – after the Second World War, it was the drink of the free world", particularly in dolce vita-era Italy, where it was "introduced by the GIs and promoted by Hollywood. But secondly, Scotch scores on its deep history and its craft. If you want to go beyond simply enjoyment, whisky rewards analysis, and I think that's become part of the appeal. It is an acquired taste. It's not a child's drink. If you get the taste of it, it's hugely rewarding."

But for all the historic and up-and-coming pubs in Edinburgh, there are glorious Scotch whisky experiences further afield in Scotland's five famed whisky regions, like Speyside in the Scottish Highlands and the dramatically beautiful island of Islay. "The Scottish whisky industry is developing really sophisticated, really well-equipped touristic facilities, visitor centres and restaurants," says MacLean.

Historic though it may be, Edinburgh's whisky culture is anything but stale. Here are MacLean's top Scotch whisky experiences – in Edinburgh and beyond.

1. Best for whisky newbies: Johnnie Walker Princes Street

"We have an awful lot of international tourists," says MacLean. "They love whisky, and the city has responded to that with whisky bars and places like the Johnnie Walker Centre."

The mammoth eight-storey Johnnie Walker Princes Street, housed in the former Houses of Fraser department store, offers an immersive, multi-faceted whisky experience. "[It's] an introduction to Scotch whisky that has done very, very well," says MacLean. "The eight floors are huge!"

Johnnie Walker Princes Street offers a variety of tutored tasting tours where visitors can blend bespoke cocktails and pair artisanal chocolate truffles with luxury whiskies, all while learning about the humble Scottish grocer whose homegrown single malt spawned the best-selling whisky brand in the world. Head to the 1820 Rooftop Bar for beautiful views of the imposing medieval masterpiece Edinburgh Castle or to the Explorers Bothy's Bar where whiskies are paired with small plates crafted by Michelin-starred chefs. "Very slick and professional, for novices and connoisseurs," says MacLean.

Website: https://www.johnniewalker.com/en-us

Address: 145 Princes St, Edinburgh EH2 4BL

Phone: +44 (0)1313 769 494

Instagram: @johnniewalker

2. Most knowledgeable bartenders: Canny Man's

MacLean has made a life of rating whisky, but humbly demurs at the epithet expert. "It was purely by luck that I got into [it]," says the former ghost writer, now working on his 20th book on whisky. "It's like Alice in Wonderland; you go through one door and then there are more doors. On the production [and] historical side, I find it absolutely fascinating."

For an Alice in Wonderland Scotch experience, MacLean suggests: "Go to a bar with a knowledgeable bartender. Go with a couple of friends, so there's three of you. Say to the bartender, 'Give us three whiskies in nosing glasses.' And say, 'Right, we liked that number three; give us three more like that." You note and taste. What you're doing is developing the knowledge that they're not all the same."

While MacLean says there are many knowledgeable bartenders in Edinburgh, his first stop is Canny Man's, a historic public house helmed by Iain Kerr.

"His family have owned this idiosyncratic traditional bar since 1871," says MacLean. "It is highly atmospheric, crowded with memorabilia – every one of which has a story, many of them donated to settle bar bills!"

The antique- and trinket-filled pub is found in Edinburgh's upscale, tree-lined Morningside neighbourhood. Though most famous for its Bloody Mary, Canny Man's holds regular Scotch tastings and names a "New Malt of the Month".

"It offers a wide range of malts (around 300) and its own house blend," adds MacLean.

Website: https://www.cannymans.co.uk/

Address: 237 Morningside Rd, Morningside, Edinburgh EH10 4QU, United Kingdom

Phone: +44 (0)1314 471 484

Instagram: @thecannymans

3. Best cosy small bar: Kay's Bar

For MacLean, there are outdoor whiskies and indoor whiskies: "If you're outdoors, I would go for an Islay whisky like Lagavulin; elemental, smoky whiskies. Then for the evening, go for more sherry-style whiskies, like Glendalough or Glenfarclas."

For a cosy evening tipple, MacLean recommends Kay’s Bar, a snug pub in Edinburgh's New Town. "[It's got] a real fire, a companionable atmosphere and a large selection of whiskies and beers," he says of the Victorian-era pub with red-painted walls and red velvet seating. "Kay’s was actually established [as a wine and spirit merchant] in the 18th Century. It's a lovely, cosy small bar."

Tiny Kay's accommodates one long bench with a smattering of tables around it, making it easy to get acquainted with your neighbour.

Website: https://www.kaysbar.uk/

Address: 39 Jamaica St, Edinburgh EH3 6HF

Phone:+44 (0)1312 251 858

Instagram: @kaysbaredinburgh

4. Best cocktails: Bramble

"I must mention Bramble," says MacLean emphatically. "Tiny, tiny cocktail bar in a tiny basement. But they've won global prizes for their cocktails and knowledge of spirits."

Bramble is found in a row of stately townhouses on Queen Street; distinguishable only by a tiny sign on an iron fence. The humble, dimly lit space began serving its uniquely inventive cocktails in 2006 – cracking the 50 Best Bars in the World in 2009 and remaining on the list for five years – and has consistently racked up prizes ever since.

"They do some ready-made cocktails with whiskies," notes MacLean. These change regularly but current standouts include the "Triple Corn" (pisco, corn whisky, corn liqueur, sweetcorn, coriander and lime) and the "Shadowman" (made from whisky, Latvian kummel liqueur, chamomile, rosemary and lemon). "The guys behind that are among the leading cocktail makers in the world," says MacLean.

Bramble welcomes nationally acclaimed DJs on Friday and Saturday nights.

Website: https://www.bramblebar.co.uk/

Address: 16A Queen St, Edinburgh EH2 1JE, United Kingdom

Phone: +44 (0)1312 266 343

Instagram: @bramble_bar

5. Best outside Edinburgh: Craigellachie Hotel, Highlander Inn, The Fiddlers and Dornoch Castle Hotel

Though Edinburgh has an excellent whisky scene, MacLean recommends visitors also explore Scotland's five whisky regions – Speyside, Islay, Campbelltown, Highland and Lowland. Some of MacLean's favourite whisky experiences are found in Speyside in the ruggedly beautiful Scottish Highlands, home to excellent salmon fishing and the country's densest concentration of Scotch distilleries.

Scotch-loving visitors can follow Speyside's Malt Whisky Trail, tracing a string of prestige and historic distilleries. Or they can find themselves in the village of Aberlour at MacLean's top pick, the Craigellachie Hotel. "Craigellachie Hotel is a pilgrimage destination for whisky lovers, with a vast collection of malts and very knowledgeable bar staff," says MacLean. "It also has a cheerful informal bar [and restaurant], The Copper Dog, and the Quaich Bar [which] has an amazing stock of whisky." Craigellachie Hotel is also home to the early 18th-Century Spey Inn pub; the oldest drover's inn in Scotland. 

Just a few paces away from the hotel is MacLean's next pick; the Highlander Inn. "It boasts a huge selection of Scotch malts and also has the largest collection of Japanese whisky in the UK."

Venturing further 115km further west to the scenic Loch Ness, MacLean also recommends the award-winning The Fiddlers Highland Restaurant in the lakeside village of Drumnadrochit. "[It] has been owned by the Beach family since 1996. As well as having a restaurant featuring Highland dishes, it has more than 500 whiskies in stock."

Continuing north to the seaside resort town of Dornoch, MacLean likes to stop at the family-owned Dornoch Castle Hotel, facing the imposing 12th-Century Dornoch Castle. "[The pub] offers a number of very rare old whiskies at generous prices. It also has a micro distillery on site. A must for anyone travelling in the north of Scotland."

Website: https://craigellachiehotel.com/

Address: Victoria St, Speyside Way, Craigellachie, Aberlour AB38 9SR

Phone:+44 (0)1340 881 204

Instagram: @thecraigellachie

6. Best splurge: The Fife Arms in Braemar

"How much do you want to spend?" quips MacLean. "If you're in Edinburgh [and want to splurge], the Balmoral Hotel has very well-informed staff and a nice whisky bar. But the Fife Arms is unbelievable. Costly, but glorious!"

The Fife Arms hotel is located in Braemar, a bustling village in Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands; a little more than a two-hour drive north from Edinburgh and 15 minutes from Balmoral Castle, the Scottish home of the Royal Family.

"It’s a small hotel, a very, very luxurious hotel," says MacLean. " It's absolutely top notch. The Victorian building has been tastefully and appropriately restored – no expense spared! The Swiss owners are among the world’s leading art collectors and every room, public and private, is embellished with artworks, more than 14,000 at the last count; some by very famous artists and including private commissions."

MacLean also praises the hotel's amenities: "The staff are impeccable; the food superb – [the restaurant has] two Michelin stars." And when it's time to finally settle in for a dram, visitors can lounge at Bertie's Whisky Bar, with its moody wood-panelled walls and rich red velvet armchairs: "Named for King Edward VII, bon viveur and gourmand. But [it's] not a traditional bar; more like a whisky library where the well-informed bar staff/'librarians' encourage guests to explore flavours."

"A truly exceptional place," says MacLean. "The best that Scotland offers – at the moment!"

Website: https://thefifearms.com/

Address: Mar Rd, Braemar, Ballater AB35 5YN

Phone: +44 (0)1339 720 200

Instagram: @thefifearms

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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F1 driver Sergio Pérez's guide to a weekend in Mexico City

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241023-f1-driver-sergio-prezs-guide-to-a-weekend-in-mexico-city, today

One of Mexico's most famous athletes, Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez talks us through the must-see places in the capital ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix.

In 2015, the Mexican Grand Prix made a triumphant return to Formula 1 after a 23-year absence.

For Sergio "Checo" Pérez, victory was particularly sweet. While born and raised in Guadalajara, Pérez's status as the most successful Grand Prix driver in Mexican history has made him a beloved figure across the country.

Growing up, though, Pérez tells BBC Travel that Formula 1 was not very popular in Mexico: "Normal people had no idea what Formula 1 was. Even finding it on television was really difficult." Since his father, Antonio Pérez Garibay, was a stock car racing driver who competed in the Nascar Mexico series, Pérez was exposed to motor racing from a young age. "I grew up with motorsport in my blood," he says. "My target was actually IndyCar when I was growing up. Formula 1 seemed too far away. It was never clear if I'd get the opportunity."

Pérez's karting performances in Mexico and then the United States took his burgeoning career to Europe, and after excelling in Formula 3 and GP2 he became sought after by Formula 1 teams. Since making his debut, he's helped to grow Formula 1 exponentially around Mexico. "The atmosphere in Mexico now is incredible," he says. "People follow it a lot. The interest is just massive around Mexico."

But while his Formula 1 travels mean that he doesn't get to spend as much time as he'd like in Mexico City, when he returns every year for the Grand Prix (27 October 2024), he knows exactly where to visit. "It's such a unique and cosmopolitan city," he says, who is based in Puerto Vallarta between races. "There are so many nationalities, the quality of food is incredible, there are good clubs, nice people, nice museums, there's a lot of sport to watch. It is a city that has everything."

Here are Pérez's recommendations for enjoying Mexico City – during F1 weekend and beyond.

1. Best tacos: El Fogoncito

The most iconic Mexican dish is undoubtedly the taco; a hand-sized tortilla filled with beef, pork, chicken, seafood or vegetables that's eaten in just a few bites. Linked to the country from centuries back, tacos exploded in popularity among Mexican miners in the 18th Century because they were so easy to make and sell. Whenever Pérez is in Mexico City, his favourite taco spot to visit is El Fogoncito, a casual and stylish taqueria with two locations close to Chapultepec Park, the biggest and oldest urban space in Latin America.

"El Fogoncito is a really nice taco place that I used to go to a lot," says Pérez. "I will order the gringa (pork shoulder and cheese) and el pastor (marinated pork) tacos. Their quesadillas are really nice, too. All of it is really good."

If you're looking for other dishes to devour in the city, Pérez recommends enchiladas (large rolled tortillas filled with saucy meat and topped with melted cheese) and pollo con mole, chicken simmered in cacao-rich mole sauce.

Website: https://www.fogoncito.com/

Instagram: @elfogoncitooficial

2. Must-see for first-time visitors: Chapultepec Castle

Built in 1785, Chapultepec Castle served as a military academy, observatory, imperial residence and the home of each president until February 1939, when it became the National Museum of History. Pérez always feels transported whenever he visits the structure, located in the heart of Chapultepec Park, overlooking majestic greenery. "It's like jumping back in time," he says. "It's really nice to be surrounded by so much history. First time visitors to Mexico City definitely have to go to Chapultepec Castle."

Visitors who want to take a deep dive into the history of the castle can pay for a guided tour of the park and the castle. Pass through the grand 18th-Century carriage hall to the Art Nouveau Introductory room and further on to the royal Games Room and luxurious red velvet-lined Smoking Room for a window into Mexico's noble past.

Website: https://mnh.inah.gob.mx/

Address: Chapultepec Forest I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11580 Mexico City

Phone number: +52 55 7601 9811

Instagram: @museodehistoria

3. Best Mexican football (fútbol) experience: Estadio Azteca

Whenever Pérez is in Mexico, one of his go-to activities is watching his beloved Club America. Pérez believes that every football fan should pay a visit to Estadio Azteca, where Club America play their home games.

One of the most famous football stadiums in the world, Estadio Azteca has hosted two World Cup finals, which were won by Brazil and Argentina, respectively. It’s also where Italy's 1970 semi-final defeat of Germany, known as the "Game of the Century", took place, and where Diego Maradona scored both the Hand of God and Goal of the Century against England in 1986.

"Estadio Azteca is one of the biggest stadiums in the world," says Pérez. "Its atmosphere is unbelievable. I also take my son with me when I'm back for a Club America game. It's just a great experience. You can have tacos while you're watching the game. A nice tequila. Plus people are so friendly in Mexico. It's such a great stadium to go to."

While Pérez admits it's harder to get to games because of his Formula 1 career, he usually gets back each November or December, especially when the team "reach a final". Football is also a great icebreaker between Formula 1 teams, too: "A lot of people in the paddock are involved in football. It's very rare that people don't like it. We are always chatting about what's going on with it."

Website: www.estadioazteca.com.mx/

Address: Calz. de Tlalpan 3465, Sta. Úrsula Coapa, Coyoacán, 04650 Ciudad de México, CDMX

Phone number: +52 55 5487 3215

Instagram: @estadioaztecaoficial

4. Best way to soak up the atmosphere: Polanco

Pérez's favourite area to explore in Mexico City is Polanco, where he often gets an ice cream with his family or heads for shopping. The neighbourhood, found directly north of Chapultepec Park, is one of the most upscale sections of the city; Pérez points out there are numerous luxury shopping malls packed with many high-end shops. "There are so many places around there that are within walking distance of each other."

Polanco is also home to the Museo Soumaya, Pérez's go-to Mexico City museum: "It's one of the biggest and most important museums in Mexico and has all the art of the Slim family." This includes sculptures from pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, Mexican art from the last 250 years, and the works of Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dalí and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

After taking in the culture and soaking up Polanco's unique blend of Californian, wooden, and contemporary architectural styles, there are also a number of fine-dining restaurants, bars and clubs to enjoy. Pérez's go-to drink is Patron Silver tequila, but he's also a fan of paloma margaritas.

"There are so many clubs in Polanco to recommend," he says. "Red Bull always do really nice afterparties", with last year's soiree held at the Auditorio Blackberry in the heart of Roma, a neighbourhood just west of the city’s historic centre. When it comes to deciding where to celebrate after the Mexican Grand Prix, Pérez annually faces the same dilemma: "The problem is there are too many parties on Sunday night in Mexico City."

Website: http://www.museosoumaya.org/

Address: Blvd. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Granada, Miguel Hidalgo, 11529 Ciudad de México, CDMX

Phone number: +52 55 1103 9800

Instagram: @elmuseoumaya

5. Best day trip out of Mexico City: Valle de Bravo

Mexico City may be one of the most vibrant and captivating cities in the world, but Pérez says there are also a number of "really nice places to go and visit that are just outside of the city". His favourite is Valle de Bravo, located two hours south-west of Mexico City on the shore of Lake Avandaro. "That's a really, really nice place. It's full of trees, on the water, but also in the middle of nowhere." Valle de Bravo is a 16th-Century Spanish Colonial town with cobblestone streets full of modern boutiques, galleries and restaurants – also dubbed the "Switzerland of Mexico" for its idyllic pine tree and lake backdrop.

An avid golfer, Pérez usually combines his downtime by visiting one of Mexico's many acclaimed golf courses. "I love golf. I haven't played in Mexico City. But I know they have some great courses. I would recommend golfing by the beach. There are some really cool places, like Nuevo Nayarit , Punta Mita and even in Cabo. There are endless great golf courses around Mexico."

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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An Irish banjo virtuoso's guide to the best traditional Irish music experiences in Galway

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241022-where-to-hear-traditional-irish-music-in-galway, today

Galway native Enda Scahill shares his favorite haunts for trad music, from packed sessions at Tig Cóilí in the Latin Quarter to intimate clambake sets at Tigh Ned on Inisheer.

Galway, with its narrow medieval streets, vibrant pub culture and unique brand of craic (lively fun), also boasts one of Ireland's best music scenes. Set in a Gaeltacht, (Irish-speaking district) the city is especially enjoying a resurgence of traditional Irish music – known locally as "trad", a name that gives the genre a hipster cool, far from its humble origins as tunes played in kitchens and street corners.

We asked Galway native Enda Scahill, one of Ireland's foremost banjo players, to help us find his hometown's best trad music sessions. At just 11 years old, Scahill was performing at pubs packed with tourists eager to experience Ireland's traditional music. "At the time, there was definitely the perception of Irish music as shamrocks, leprechauns and 'Danny Boy'. But, just like jazz and bluegrass, there are layers upon layers of depth," says Scahill. "Galway is a very small town, but you can catch two sessions a day, every day of the week… Young people proudly play old-time music, and so the quality of musicians at the moment is exceptional. We say, 'If you drop a coin out of a plane over Ireland, you'll no doubt hit a world-class fiddle player'. And banjo players too."

When Scahill was a teen, there was one banjo player in the west of Ireland, "and we'd drive an hour and a half, which was a big deal in rural Ireland in the '80s, what with the bad cars and bad roads". Now, Irish banjo players are everywhere in the trad music scene, and he's taught a fair share of them.

"Everybody wants to come to Galway!" he says. "We have a fantastic reputation for fun, food and the amazing scenery of Connemara at our doorstep." And all are invited, listener or player. "The sessions are very welcoming. There's no gatekeeper."

Here are Scahill's favourite places to catch trad music in Galway.

1. Best pocket-sized pub session: Tig Cóilí

"Tig Cóilí is probably the most famous pub in Galway," says Scahill. Despite its prime spot at the car-free crossroads of Mainguard and Shop Streets, this cosy pub has a country tavern feel.

US dollar bills, police badges and framed photos of famous faces – Paul Brady, Sharon Shannon, Dessie O'Halloran, Frankie Gavin and Máirtín O'Connor – cover the walls, giving the pub a well-worn, lived-in charm. "It looks 100 years old, but I remember, before it became Tig Cóilí, it was a modern-style pub, mostly quiet except for, as people would say, 'swingers at two o'clock in the afternoon,' says Scahill.

Musicians squeeze into a corner booth by the fire-engine-red windows for two daily sessions. Each session features three core players, with seven or eight others joining in. "I played their very first session 25 years ago, with the owner's son," says Scahill. "The only real change they've made since then is putting up barriers to stop tourists from falling onto the musicians."

Website: www.tigchoiligalway.com

Address: Mainguard St, Galway

Phone: +353 91 561 294

Instagram: @tigchoili

2. Best session in a historic pub: Taaffes

Head out of Tig Cóilí and across the street to Taaffes, the historic stone-fronted pub that's anchored Galway's pub scene for more than 150 years. Owned by the Lally family, Taaffes was a second home to Scahill as a boy.

"I was playing there so much in my late teens that my mother would call the bar looking for me," he recalls. "Their Guinness is fantastic, and it's always packed, morning, noon and night." Inside, low ceilings and cosy nooks invite lingering.

Sessions happen in a snug at the front; a stage in the back is pulled out for bigger performances. Music fills the pub twice daily; Sharon Shannon and Seán Keane have lit up the room, along with local musicians and wandering minstrels.

On St Patrick's Day, most pubs in Ireland lock their doors by 13:00, shifting to a one-in, one-out policy. "Taaffes is always the first to do that because of the crowds," says Scahill. "One year I played there, and it was like a war zone – people falling on stage, instruments getting kicked. You walk out feeling like you've survived Vietnam."

Website: https://taaffesbar.ie/

Address: 19 Shop Street, Galway

Phone: +353 91 564066

Instagram: @taaffesbar

3. Best session to hear a tin whistle icon: The Crane Bar

For more than 40 years, tin whistle maestro Sean Ryan, with his sharp staccato style, has led The Crane Bar's Sunday 13:00 session. "He really looks the part, too," says Scahill. "The gigantic beard, the bonnet hat. He lives in the famously haunted Leap Castle, and his biggest tune is The Coast of Austria – a nice example of Irish sardonic humour."

Housed inside a Victorian cottage on Sea Road, The Crane is all character – rough floors, bright green and yellow walls and dusty framed photos of its storied history. The Guinness, with its creamy head, even backs up the pub's claim as Galway's best.

The pub's musical heritage runs deep. Owner Mike Crehan, a tin whistle player, is related to the legendary fiddler Junior Crehan. More sessions happen nightly at 18:00, when seasoned players and newcomers mix in a laid-back, homey atmosphere. The upstairs "Listeners Club" feels more like a concert venue, with bands and singer-songwriters starting at 21:00.

Website: www.thecranebar.com

Address: 2 Sea Road, Galway

Phone: +353 91 587419

Instagram: @thecranebar

4. Best session with rotating musicians: Monroe's Tavern  

From The Crane, walk towards the River Corrib for a few minutes to find Monroe's Tavern, where Scahill has been playing since he was 15. A Galway institution since 1964, "it's been in the Monroe family for decades and is now run by Gary Monroe, who's hugely passionate about Irish music, especially trad," he says.

Trad sessions happen nightly, but the standout is Fridays at 16:30. What began a couple of years ago as a casual meet-up has since become one of the best sessions in the city, where a rotating guest joins two core musicians. "I'll be the third every six weeks or so," says Scahill. "Plus the drop-in musicians; some days, there might be 20. It's always loads of fun." At 19:00, Monroe's brother, who runs the tavern's pizza parlour, hands out slices to the players at the session's end.

"Gary's built a strong, welcoming community vibe," says Scahill. "There's a guy who owns the biggest garden centre in Galway who comes every week with his double bass. His sister Mary, in her 70s, has an incredible voice. She always sits at the bar, and at some point, someone will say, 'Oh Mary, sing us a song'.' And the whole place goes quiet. It's magic."

Website: www.monroes.ie

Address: 14 Dominick Street Upper, Galway

Phone: +353 91 583397

Instagram: @monroestaverngalway

5. Best country pub session: Campbell's Tavern

One of Galway's best features is how quickly the stunning countryside unfolds just outside its perimeter. Follow the Lough Corrib north for about 32km to the village of Cloughanover. "On a very dark road in the middle of nowhere is Campbell's Tavern," Scahill says, "a proper country pub, a true hidden gem."

Campbell's hosts a trad session every Wednesday and a Thursday old-time bluegrass session at 22:00 that can run until 02:00. "It's quite a big pub, and the sessions happen in the front bar, where if 50 people were in it, you couldn't turn around," says Scahill. "Willie Campbell, the owner, is a very community-led guy, a big music head as well."

Scahill once brought Jake Workman, guitarist for Ricky Skaggs' band Kentucky Thunder, to the old-time session, where a cohort of musicians gathers in the middle and at any moment, someone from the group – or from a far corner – starts a new tune. Everyone joins in, creating a spontaneous, collaborative experience. "Jake is one of the best guitar players in the world and he said he'd never experienced anything like it. It's an incredible, quintessential Irish experience."

Website: www.campbellstavern.net

Address: Cloughanover, Headford, Co. Galway, H91 T4A8

Phone: +353 93 35454

6. Best trad after touring the wild Burren: Connolly's

Drive south from Galway along the Wild Atlantic Way for about 27km and you'll reach Kinvara, a seaside village where colourful houses line the waterfront. On the corner of Main Street and The Quay is Connolly's, a pub known for its rousing Thursday and Sunday sessions.

"Many world-class musicians and singers have moved out of Galway City to Kinvara, escaping traffic and high rents," Scahill explains, "though of course, both followed. It's also become a real hub where Galway people meet [County] Clare people… I've only played there a handful of times, but it's a really lovely spot. They've recently added glass doors that open to an ocean view, and you hear some amazing musicians."

Upstairs, the restaurant serves locally sourced dishes from Kinvara's organic farmers and foragers, adding a touch of refinement to the laid-back vibe of the sessions taking place below. Just beyond the county line is the otherworldly karst landscape of the Burren and the legendary Cliffs of Moher.

Website: www.upstairsatconnollys.ie

Address: The Quay, Kinvara, Co. Galway H91 D623

Phone: +353 91 637530

Instagram: @connollyskinvara

7. Best oceanfront trad served with a crab bake: Tigh Ned

"If you're here in the summer, you have to visit Inisheer, one of the three Aran Islands [in Galway Bay]," says Scahill. "First, there's the biggest, Inishmore – 'inish' means island, and 'more' means big. Then you've got Inishmaan, the middle one – 'maan' means average. Finally, there's Inisheer, since 'sheer' means small."

"They really put a lot of thought into those names," he deadpans.

On Inisheer, find Tigh Ned tucked inside a thatched cottage that's been in the Ó Conghaile family since 1897. From April to October, musicians fill the salty air with the sounds of sweet trad. "It's as 'country pub' as you want on an island."

The kitchen serves classic pub fare and fresh seafood. Scahill recommends calling ahead to order the crab special. "Every morning their boats come back filled with these big brown Atlantic crabs. They boil them in the back and serve them with brown bread and butter. It's the most spectacular meal you'll ever have. My son and his friend had it when they were about nine, and years later, they're still talking about it."

Website: www.tighned.com

Address: Inisheer, Aran Islands, Co. Galway

Phone: +353 99 75020

Instagram:@tighned

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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Gabriel Luna's weekend guide to Austin, Texas

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241018-gabriel-lunas-weekend-guide-to-austin-texas, today

Since attending the 2016 US Grand Prix, Austin's own Gabriel Luna is a huge F1 fan. Ahead of the 2024 race, the actor shares his Bat City picks, from live music to breakfast tacos.

Austin, Texas, is known for its barbecue, cowboy culture, breakfast tacos, rollicking music scene and its defiant slogan: "Keep Austin Weird."

But since 2012, when the Circuit of The Americas in Travis County, located 15 miles south-east of the city, hosted its inaugural United States Grand Prix, Austin has also been considered the American home for Formula One.

Actor Gabriel Luna fell in love with the sport when he was invited to the 2016 United States Grand Prix. "Just the speed, the sounds, meeting all of the drivers. It was really exciting," says Luna.

After striking up a friendship with the Haas F1 team, Luna has since attended races in Budapest, Monza and Montreal. He's also returned to his home city of Austin, where he was born, raised and attended university, to watch the United States Grand Prix live on three more occasions.

"I just fell in love with the sport. I've seen it grow exponentially year after year," says Luna, who credits the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive for bringing more US attention to the sport. While Miami and Las Vegas now host their own races, Luna believes that Austin's distinctive free-wheeling spirit and party atmosphere make it the best place to watch Formula One in the US.

"Having the race in Austin is a great way to show off the city," he says. "It's a truly beautiful part of the country. But also the city is built on music, food and enjoying life. We attract a lot of bon vivants who just want to live a good life and they can get that in Austin."

Here are Luna's favourite ways to experience his hometown.

1. Best way to experience everyday life: Barton Springs Pool

Located within Austin's bustling Zilker Metropolitan Park is the scenic Barton Springs Pool, where for just a small fee, visitors can relax on the grass and jump into its water all year-round. For Luna, this three-acre pool fed by underground springs is the "centre of culture and life" in Austin. "You get to see Austin's youth, its old-timers, its hippies doing their yoga, people playing guitar. Everyone is just jumping into the water, which is perpetually 68 degrees."

When Luna is home in the summer months, he loves relaxing by the water, jumping in, drying off and jumping back in – on repeat. "You can just lay out on the hill on the far side of Barton Springs and see the whole city. It's the heart of the town."

Website: https://www.austintexas.gov/department/barton-springs-pool

Address: 2131 William Barton Dr., Austin, TX 78746

Phone number: (512) 974-6300

Instagram: @austincityparks

2. Best cultural experience: Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center

While Austin is renowned for its food, booze and music scenes, it also has a bevy of fantastic museums. Luna's favourite is the Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, located in Rainey Street Historic District right by Lady Bird Lake. "It's in this beautiful building, which itself is a work of art," says Luna, whose parents were both of Mexican descent. "But it also has a theatre, a gallery and their rotating exhibits celebrate Mexican American arts and heritage."

Luna also points visitors to The Blanton Museum of Art at the Austin chapter of the University of Texas, which has more than 21,000 works of modern and contemporary art from Europe, the United States and Latin America. It's also home to renowned American artist Ellsworth Kelly's immersive art building Austin; famed for its natural depiction of light and colour.

Website: https://www.austintexas.gov/department/emma-s-barrientos-mexican-american-cultural-center

Address: 600 River St, Austin, TX 78701

Phone number: (512) 974-3772

Instagram: @esbmacc

3. Best for live music: Broken Spoke

Austin, which bills itself as the "live music capital of the world", has a wildly diverse music scene rivalling those of Nashville, Memphis and even New Orleans. "Culturally in Austin, it's all about the music. You just have to get out there, catch a band and listen to the music," says Luna.

The actor and sometimes musician loves Broken Spoke, an old-school spot that's been serving beer and chicken-fried steak and hosting bands since 1964. "It's protected by the National Registry and is an incredible little honky-tonk bar that can't be touched," says Luna. "The community gathered together to acquire enough signatures to stop it from being purchased."

Another venue Luna calls his "personal headquarters" is Antone's; one of Austin’s most iconic blues venues. Antone's, now found on Fifth Street, might have moved locations a few times since the original location opened in 1975, but that hasn't stopped the likes of Ray Charles, James Brown, Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan from playing its stages. "It's really home for me when I'm back in Austin."

For even more live music, Luna also suggests The Continental Club and the juke joint C-Boy's Heart & Soul, both found on Congress Street; one of downtown Austin's premier shopping and entertainment districts.

Website: https://www.brokenspokeaustintx.net/

Address: 3201 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704

Phone number: (512) 442-6189

Instagram: @brokenspokeaustintx

4. Best place for breakfast tacos: Juan in a Million

Luna can't help but get nostalgic when asked about breakfast tacos; a Tex-Mex dish of scrambled eggs, cheeses, veg and meat wrapped in a tortilla that's become known as an Austin specialty. He laments a number of places which have closed, in particular Maria's Taco Express on South Lamar Boulevard, which shut its doors in September 2020. Luna also insists that the best breakfast tacos in Austin are at his grandmother's house, which he ate every morning for 12 years before school.

Rather than badgering her for them, Luna heads to Juan in A Million in East Austin. "It's a great Mexican restaurant that has fantastic breakfast tacos," he says. Juan in a Million's menu features a full array of breakfast taco choices, from chorizo (sausage) to migas-style (with soft scrambled eggs and crispy fried tortilla strips). If you're in the north of the city, Luna suggests Tierra Linda Taqueria, a wonderful no-frills eatery located in a gas station serving huge orders.

Website: https://juaninamillion.com/

Address: 2300 E Cesar Chavez St, Austin, TX 78702

Phone number: (512) 472-3872

Instagram: @juaninamillionrestaurant

5. Best for BBQ: Franklin Barbecue

The great state of Texas is barbecue country, and Austin takes the craft very seriously. For great central Texas-style barbecue, Luna says visitors can never go wrong at Austin cult favourite Franklin Barbecue; a turquoise-and-white roadside stop on 11th Street instantly recognisable by its massive queue. Founded in 2009 by Aaron Franklin, the spot was named the best barbecue in the country by Bon Appétit in 2011. "Aaron is a legend who has created an incredible legacy for himself," says Luna. "I've lived in Los Angeles since 2011 and I always get his [barbecued beef] brisket shipped out for my Super Bowl parties."

Luna also recommends Black's Barbecue, founded in 1932 and located in Lockhart; a 30-minute drive from Austin. But he quickly adds that Terry Black's BBQ is also worth a visit; explaining that the two restaurants have been engulfed in a family rivalry since the latter was opened by twin brothers Mike and Mark when they didn't approve of their Uncle Kent's cooking techniques at Black's. "They're both great," says Luna. "The brisket in particular at Black's is fantastic."

Ultimately, Luna says, "There's lots of great barbecue across Austin. At a certain point it's a little but like splitting hairs because so much of it tastes so good."

Website: https://franklinbbq.com/

Address: 900 E 11th St, Austin, TX 78702

Phone number: (512) 653-1187

Instagram: @franklinbbq

6. Best casual and fancy bites: Magnolia Café, Uchi and more

As Austin continues to become one of the most desirable cities in America, Luna notes that its food-scene has improved dramatically.

His favourite burgers in Austin are found at the Casino El Camino and Sandy's Hamburgers, while he hits the Taqueria Arandas chain for Mexican food, the posh Uchi for elevated sushi, Justine's for a hip French brasserie experience, the generational Hoover's Cooking on Manor Road for farm-to-table soul food and East Side Pies for thin crust pizza.

One Austin dish that Luna thinks is underrated is a good bowl of queso; a creamy dip made of melted cheese. "People do it in a really artful way," he says. "Then you just get some tortilla chips and dip them in there. It's like a fondue." Luna calls Magnolia Café – a vintage Tex Mex-influenced diner on Congress Street – the best place to eat queso in Austin, as they mix in avocado, beef, salsa, pico de gallo, black beans and jalapeño to create their own signature take on the dish. "It's the perfect thing to eat after a long night of drinking and when you're really drunk," he says.

Website: https://www.magnoliacafeaustin.com/

Address: 1920 South Congress Ave, Austin TX 78704

Phone number: (512) 445-0000

Instagram: @magnoliacafeaustin

7. Best bar: Whisler's

Austin's Sixth Street is renowned for its long stretch of bars, which Luna says you can stumble between with ease: "They all have different personalities. You can pop into The Jackalope [a dive] or Maggie Mae's [massive event space]".

Nowadays Luna prefers a more laid-back vibe, which is what you get when you head farther east on Sixth Street to his favourite watering hole: Whisler's. "It's got a really cool little secret Mezcal bar," he says. "You go up this little spiral staircase and there's a very small room and a tiny bar. They have a fine collection of mezcals up there." The nearby White Horse honky-tonk plays great country music, and Luna also suggests the Uptown Sports Club for a classy yet still casual ambience.

Website: https://whislersatx.com/

Address: 1816 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Phone number: (512) 480-0781

Instagram: @whislersatx

BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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Booking your next holiday? Consider these six trailblazing travel firms making the world a better place

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241101-six-trailblazing-travel-firms-making-the-world-a-better-place, today

This year's Global Responsible Tourism Award winners demonstrate that travel can be inclusive, climate-friendly, nature-positive and a positive force for local communities.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Responsible Tourism Awards are a standard bearer for the positive side of the travel industry. Run by the non-profit International Centre for Responsible Tourism Global, the awards aim to showcase the benefits of tourism and inspire other firms to do the same.  

Awards like these are particularly important at a time when tourism is under pressure. With global travel and tourism numbers back to pre-pandemic levels and one in 10 people employed in the industry, the need to improve the sector's environmental, economic and cultural impact is clear. Lifting up businesses that give back to their local communities creates a win-win for tourists and locals alike. And for travellers interested in supporting local culture, having extraordinary nature experiences and a ensuring a responsible travel industry, the winning firms have demonstrated their ability to do that and more. 

Tess Longfield, head of sustainability communications at Sabre, who sponsors the awards, commented that extraordinary work is being done by all the winners to create a more sustainable and equitable world through tourism. "It's a testament to the power of responsible travel to make a real difference," she said.

From a private ecolodge in South Africa to a volunteering organisation in a Peruvian biosphere reserve, these are the firms to book with in 2024 and beyond:

Winner – Employing and upskilling local communities: Grootbos Private Nature Reserve, South Africa 

This five-star ecolodge set in 3,500 hectares of South African wilderness is constantly researching pioneering ways of doing things to improve the lives of the local community and protect the fragile landscapes and wildlife that surround it.

As well as offering unique tourism experiences to guests, such as guided walks to the flora-rich fynbos and coastal safaris in in waters teeming with great white sharks and dolphins, Grootbos' lodge provides ecotourism jobs to the local community. Profits from the lodge fund the Grootbos Foundation, which gives free skills and business training for hundreds of local people in the areas of hospitality, horticulture, entrepreneurship and biodiversity. It creates a ripple effect that's much needed during a period of serious unemployment in South Africa.

The judging team called Grootbos "an exemplary business that others can learn from", praising the way that it constantly pushes the boundaries and explores new ways of developing responsible tourism. 

"Grootbos cares about community and conservation," said Phil Murray, fundraising, donor relations and communications manager at Grootbos Foundation. "Neither can be ignored, and both can mutually benefit from programmes and a responsible tourism business that prizes people and planet."

Winner – Championing cultural diversity: Rajasthan Studio, India

Rajasthan Studio curates art experiences with master artisans in Rajasthan, allowing travellers to experience, understand and value the local culture of the place they are visiting. Travellers can visit master artists at their homes and studios, meet their families, see the process behind making local handicrafts and co-create a personalised souvenir with the crafter.

The experiences include an insight into rare and unique art forms like puppetry and the blue pottery of Jaipur, pichwai art and sea foam carving of Udaipur, leather juttis and tie dye of Jodhpur and much more. The idea is to build a community of artists and scale the business to different parts of Rajasthan, and eventually across India. 

"Rajasthan as a state is blessed with a wonderful art heritage and travellers are eager to explore every bit of it," said company founder Kartik Gaggar. "But why should we limit it to exploring? We asked the same question and the answer was: let's turn it into an experience." 

The judges were impressed with how Gaggar has created an immersive cultural experience that both economically benefits artists and enriches travellers. They called it a "highly replicable approach".

Today, the company offers more than 20 hand-on art experiences in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur, with plans to include artists from Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Bundi and Kota in the near future.

Winner – Increasing local sourcing and creating shared value: Sivatel Bangkok Hotel, Thailand

As this year's protests have been demonstrating, tourism has an impact on local people as much as visitors. Sivatel Bangkok was this year's winner for its innovative approach that brings together local providers to directly help the community.

The hotel sources 70% of its ingredients organically and partners with more than 50 local farmers through the Sivatel's Farmer Friends Network. It also supports local producers and fosters a sustainable ecosystem through the "Sivatel Sustainable Market", a pop-up market within the hotel where local artisans and food producers can sell their wares to travellers. Uniforms are designed by Folkcharm, a local sustainable fashion brand that supports local artisans.

Perhaps most uniquely, it runs a "From Kitchen to Chicken" programme, diverting hotel food scraps to feed black soldier fly larvae, which are then used as protein for organic chickens at a local chicken farm, where the hotel then sources its meat.

The judging panel found Sivatel Bangkok's structured programme based around regenerative agriculture and funding impressive, along with the way it sources and trains local providers. 

"We believe that to live on this Earth, we cannot live alone but must support each other," said Sivatel CEO Alisara Sivayathorn.

Winner – Making tourism inclusive: TUI UK&I

With a business that serves more than six million holidaymakers a year, TUI is one of the best-known tourism brands in Europe. Its deep and comprehensive commitment to inclusivity impressed the judges: the tour operator has devised a unique way to help those with access needs book their accommodations.

Among TUI's many initiatives, they have 90 dedicated agents in their contact centre who have had specialist accessibility training; the team has partnered with AccessAble to survey hotels and develop detailed access guides; and also works with Sign Live to provide interpreting services for British Sign Language Users. 

More like this:

• 10 sustainable travel destinations to visit in 2024

• What it's like to live in the world's most liveable cities for 2024

• The Japanese philosophy for a no-waste world

"Around one in four of the UK population lives with a disability or condition that impacts their daily life," said Marina Snellenberg, TUI's accessibility manager, "and the prevalence of disability rises sharply with age. It's important that TUI consider the needs and expectations of the disabled community, allowing for a sustained and deliverable customer experience for years to come." 

Judges were pleased to see a major tour operator address the needs of those with access needs so comprehensively, and hope that others will follow their example.

Winner – What are you doing about climate change?: Jetwing Hotels, Sri Lanka

This award celebrates a small hotel group in Sri Lanka that is actively decarbonising its operations, showing that even smaller players can take meaningful steps towards sustainability and inspire others while doing so.  

In a tropical climate like Sri Lanka, air conditioning can consume up to 60% of a hotel's energy needs. Across its 19 hotels, Jetwing Hotels uses renewable energy from biomass, solar PV, solar thermal and biogas for power. In 2023, the hotel group generated the equivalent of the power needed for about 13,490 households through renewable energy alone. The company has also shortened its supply chain, reducing transport emissions, and is now sourcing 40% of their inputs locally to their hotels.

"By reducing energy costs and promoting a culture of environmental responsibility among our staff and guests, we ensure that our business practices are not only beneficial for the environment but also economically viable," said managing director Dmitri Cooray, "Our success shows that even the smallest efforts can create a ripple effect, encouraging others to make impactful changes."

Winner - Nature Positive: CREES, Peru 

The award founders believe that the travel industry has a responsibility to contribute to the reversal of biodiversity loss and protect nature for future generations by promoting a regenerative approach to tourism. CREES, a Peruvian company offering tours and volunteering opportunities in the Manu Biosphere Reserve, is this year's winner of the Nature Positive award.

This educational tourism operation is working to benefit local people and conserve biodiversity at its three research stations in the Manu National Park that are home to one of the longest running and largest biodiversity studies in the Amazon. Guests get to witness conservation efforts first hand, exploring the rainforest in the company of the centre's naturalist guides, and participating in ongoing projects like checking pitfall traps, monitoring birdlife and taking visual surveys of reptiles and amphibians at night. Many of the projects monitor the life of the forest in newly regenerated forest areas, replanted by the team's conservationists, as a way to understand species recovery. 

Judges were particularly impressed by how CREES approaches its work, citing its broad and holistic agenda aimed at promoting sustainable alternatives that respect human rights, intergenerational rights, biodiversity rights and the rights of species to ensure long-term sustainable economic development, as key factors in its win.

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The world's adventure capital's massive gamble

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241017-the-worlds-adventure-capitals-massive-gamble, today

The fuel-guzzling town of Queenstown, New Zealand, has an audacious goal to become the first tourist destination on Earth to have a completely carbon-zero visitor economy – and all by 2030.

By 2030 – if things really go to plan – you'll land in Queenstown on New Zealand's South Island (possibly even aboard an electric-powered Air New Zealand airplane) and make your way to town via an electric gondola or on a hydro-powered ferry across the town's famous glacier-fed lake, Lake Wakatipu. Skiers and snowboarders – who in winter descend on this region in ever-increasing numbers from around the world – will ride electric-powered chairlifts to the peaks of the surrounding ski resorts.

Year-round, travellers might take high-speed rides on Lake Wakatipu and along the shallow whitewater rapids of the Shotover River town aboard the world's first fully electric jet boats. Even the TSS Earnslaw – this hemisphere's oldest coal-fired, passenger-carrying steamship that has transported young families on day excursions since the 1970s – will run on hydrogen.

It's all part of the region's very ambitious plan to become the first tourist town on Earth to have a carbon-zero visitor economy by 2030. The "adventure capital of the world" – a title earned through decades of innovation creating death-defying activities that had been done nowhere else, but ones that run primarily on fossil fuels – now wants to become the ecotourism capital of the world. And they're aiming for a carbon-zero visitor economy in six years, not an easier-to-achieve carbon-neutral visitor economy (where Queenstown could use carbon credits, like planting trees, to achieve its environmental goals). Becoming carbon-zero is much harder to achieve – because it means you can't emit any carbon at all.

"Well, 2030 creates urgency, doesn't it?" Destination Queenstown CEO Mat Woods asks rhetorically. "2030 seemed so hard to achieve that it got the community excited. It means that everyone in the community has to be part of this [push to carbon-zero]."

Queenstown's huge environmental challenge stemmed from a concern that the region's infrastructure was struggling to cope with the sheer number of tourists coming to town. Queenstown is set around a massive lake, fringed by the rugged mountains of the country's Southern Alps. It's been a skiing hotspot since resorts first opened in the 1940s, but the development of an adventure tourism economy built around its dramatic landscape since the 1960s established the region as one of New Zealand's most popular destinations.

Last year, almost 400,000 international visitors came here, an almost-20% rise since 2019, just before the pandemic. This number is particularly significant when you consider Queenstown has a permanent population of around 50,000.

"Locals were asking, what's in this for us," Woods says. "And can we really sustain this region the way it's going?"

The three local regional tourism organisations – Destination Queenstown, Queenstown Lakes District Council and Lake Wanaka Tourism – proposed the audacious goal in 2021 and were surprised at the support they got from tourism operators. "We took the plan out to the community and weren't sure what to expect," Woods says. "And everyone supported it. And that's the most important part in all of this. Every person has to play a part."

That could be someone like… say, Mr Chippy. While New Zealand eagerly awaits the really big shifts towards environmental sustainability in tourism – like the trial of the region's first e-plane flight, set for 2026 on an Air New Zealand cargo route between Wellington and the Marlborough Sounds – Mr Chippy, aka Michael Sly, has been quietly composting 20 tonnes of hotel food waste each month around Queenstown. His company, Waste To Wilderness, turns the scraps left by tourists into nutrient-dense soil used for food growing – a perfect example of regenerative tourism. "You don't have to take giant leaps," he says. "Take little steps in the right direction and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve."

Though given the number of tourists coming to the Queenstown region each year, local accommodation providers must become the most consequential players in Queenstown's plan to run on alternative energy. The promising news is that already no accommodation can match what Headwaters Eco Lodge has achieved – and long before the 2030 goalpost. It's the first accommodation on the planet to be recognised by the Living Building Challenge, the most rigorous of all environmental assessment programmes.

Surrounded on all sides by the Southern Alps and braided river valleys in the picture-perfect hamlet of Glenorchy, 45 minutes' drive west of Queenstown, the lodge is built entirely from recycled building material. It uses the world's most advanced compost toilets, while every single litre of wastewater irrigates extensive wetlands built through the middle of the property. All of its power comes from one of the South Island's largest solar gardens – there's nearly 600 solar panels on site – which produce so much energy that the excess is used to power another business up the road.

"My husband Paul and I came up this idea of creating these slow tourism experiences that could support this idea of regenerative design," says Headwaters Eco Lodge co-owner, Debbi Brainerd. "We're in the most beautiful place here in Glenorchy. We liked the idea of creating accommodation that had a positive carbon affect, so we created these things in design to help us get there."

Within Queenstown itself, a refurbished 40-year-old motor inn, Sherwood Queenstown, made Expedia's Top 10 eco-friendly stays list in 2019. It runs almost entirely off 248 solar panels and a full-time horticulturist grows nearly half of all produce required by the hotel's restaurant on a hillside within the property that overlooks Lake Wakatipu. "We say that it's all about small things done consistently that really make a difference," explains general manager Hayley Scott. "But it's also important to have big goals to work towards. Everyone in this community is committed to getting as close to achieving carbon-zero by 2030 as we can. It's got us all thinking."

Dig a little deeper and you'll find that world-first environmental innovation is happening across the Queenstown region. Shotover Jet, which whisks travellers through the narrow canyons of Queenstown’s Shotover River at 85 km/h, are trialling the world's first electric-powered jet boat. It's taken three years, but the prototype boat is capable of the same spins and turns ­– where pilots drive guests just centimetres from the cliffs beside the Shotover River – as their fuel-powered counterparts. But the electric version will actually be far more powerful than the original fuel model. And once it's built, Shotover Jet plan to share the prototype with the rest of the industry to ensure carbon output is eliminated across all jet boat companies in Queenstown.

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• A model for regenerative tourism in New Zealand

• Why New Zealand’s newest Great Walk is so important

And the world's first electric hydro-foiling ferry will soon start operating on a lake just south-west of Queenstown. Expected to save more than 240 tonnes of carbon emissions each year (equivalent to taking 52 petrol cars off the road), the Swedish-designed ferry will operate on Lake Manapouri from early 2025 using battery power only. The same type of ferry is expected to operate on Lake Wakatipu next, with local marinas recently updated to enable electric boat charging for all lake users. 

And the innovations towards a carbon zero visitor economy keep on coming. A local wine tour company – Appellation Wine Tours – has introduced two new electric vehicles to their fleet; while tour company Nomad Safaris started Tesla Tours, taking zero-emission electric vehicles on private tours to the most scenic parts of the region, like an area just beyond Glenorchy dubbed "Paradise", where rivers running down from glaciers high in the national park above feed the deep waters of Lake Wakatipu.

The region has also developed 130km of bike trails that follow the edge of Lake Wakatipu and lead deep into the backcountry beyond town, sometimes along swaying suspension bridges crossing the emerald-coloured Kawarau River, making it globally recognised as a cycling destination. By 2026, it's estimated biking will reach as much as 50% the size of the more carbon-unfriendly ski visitor economy that currently dominates tourism in the area.

And every one of these developments spur other businesses to push for their own environmental victories and make the next big carbon-zero conquest. As global temperatures surge and storms wreak destruction of unprecedented proportions, it's inspiring to see an entire community of tourism operators embark on a challenge that, if successful, will cut 20 years off the carbon-zero target set by the United Nations Climate Change Council. Their efforts may go largely unnoticed in mainstream media, but this community of former fuel-guzzlers plan to show the world there's still hope for us all yet.

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Kamikochi: Japan's car-free town that autumn hikers love

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241016-kamikochi-japans-car-free-town-that-autumn-hikers-love, today

With a record 35 million foreign visitors expected in Japan this year, Kamikochi is an idyllic, relaxing break from some of the country's more heavily touristed destinations.

Nestled in the Japanese Alps at 1,500m elevation, the seasonal resort town of Kamikochi is an idyllic, car-free getaway with cool, crisp mountain air, riverside hiking trails and an abundance of Japanese snow monkeys. There are no private homes, year-round residents or chain stores of any kind – no McDonald's, Starbucks or Burger King; instead, it's known as an escape from the enervating heat that grips most of Japan in the summertime and for its abundant, sublime autumn colours that peak in October. I loved it immediately, though my teenage sons, Leo and James baulked at the communal shower arrangement in our hotel.

Their mood brightened, though, as I explained that our agenda for our three-day, two-night stay included nothing but hiking, eating and relaxing. "No museums, no temples?" James gleefully asked. We'd arrived in Kamikochi roughly mid-way through a month-long trip around Honshu, Japan's largest island, and by this point the boys had seen far too many temples, shrines and museums for their tastes. Kamikochi, we reassured them, would be a holiday from our holiday in a simple place with a few clusters of hotels, restaurants and shops all clustered along the Azusa River.

The quest to find pristine natural environs unspoiled by mass tourism long predates the social media era. In his 1896 book, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, the English missionary, climber and conservationist Reverend Walter Weston echoed the sentiments of an unnamed Japanese writer who complained of "foreign tourists who come to his country, and after rushing through it at the rate of 40 miles an hour then hurry home to record their impressions and pose as authorities on what they have only glanced at".

In his writings and lectures, Weston popularised the term "Japanese Alps" and put the area that became the resort town of Kamikochi on the radar of international tourists. The town's popularity as a holiday destination for Japanese tourists spiked in 1927 with the release of Kappa, a novel set in Kamikochi written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan's most famous writers. In 1934, Chūbu-Sangaku National Park, home to Kamikochi and 10 of Japan's 21 peaks over 3,000m, was established and the area became known as the "most beautiful valley in Japan", inspiring comparisons with California's Yosemite National Park.

With all the media hype about overtourism and rising visitor numbers in Japan, I hoped Kamikochi would be a relaxing break from some of the more heavily touristed destinations like Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, which we'd visited, and enjoyed, earlier in the trip.  

In the nearby gateway city of Kanazawa, I asked our volunteer guide, Michiko Kitaguchi, whom we found through the excellent Kanazawa Goodwill Guide association, about Kamikochi, and she said that in Chinese, Kamikochi fittingly means "a place where the god descends". Her favourite time of year in Kamikochi is autumn when the colours in the valley are spectacular. 

"I am a Kamikochi lover who goes there every year to feel the energy of nature," she said. "The sounds of the river flowing, the autumn-coloured mountains of the Hodaka, the golden Japanese larch forest by the river is really stunning in the fall."

Kamikochi has been a green getaway since 1975 when private cars and motorcycles were banned in response to rising traffic and visitor numbers and a desire to preserve the place’s tranquillity. In fact, conservation efforts began a century earlier, in 1875, when the former logging town banned felling trees in the area to preserve its natural beauty. Laws were passed to prevent the removal of alpine plants in 1909, and it was the first area in the country to be formally designated as a "protection forest" in 1916. In 1963, officials established the Kamikochi Beautification Association to address the issue of littering and poor tourist etiquette more broadly. In the '70s, the number of hotels and inns was capped at 17, the same number that exist today (along with a pair of campsites; there are no Airbnbs).

The place has an egalitarian appeal in that almost everyone arrives by bus – if you try to drive, you have to park about half an hour away and take a bus anyway; and the only other option is to hike in or take a taxi, though few visitors opt to do this. A hybrid bus route to Kamikochi was established in 1994, leaving from Takayama, our prior stop, and also Matsumoto, famous for its striking 16th-Century castle, and tour buses were banned in 2005.

As we exited the bus terminal with our baggage, I was glad that we'd chosen a nearby hotel: the Nishi-itoya Mountain Lodge, which has private rooms and hostel-style bunk rooms. Other options, like the historic Tokusawa Inn, founded in 1885, require a one- to two-hour hike from the bus terminal with your luggage.

We walked across the Kappa bridge, named after Akutagawa's novel, and immediately slalomed through a mob of selfie stick-toting tourists. I reckoned that Kamikochi wasn't as off-the-beaten path as we'd hoped, though it was noon on a Saturday, which is rarely an ideal time to have a place all to yourself.

We drew up a plan to take three easy hikes, one for each day of our visit, and avoid all the steep knee-shattering treks up Mt Jonen, Mt Chogatake, Mt Oku-Hotakadake and others. (The national park has 40 mountain peaks with altitudes of more than 2,400m.) On our first hike to Myojin Pond, I felt the wish-I-could-bottle-it travel high I live for as a compulsive traveller as we met one troop of mischievous Japanese snow monkeys after another while hiking along and near the river. It was a balmy 18C and the crisp mountain air was a welcome relief from the steamy streets of Takayama. Kamikochi is a major birding destination, and we could hear what a birder told me were Japanese bush warblers singing what sounded like, "hoo-ke-kyo". 

Kamikochi drew 1.3 million visitors, mostly Japanese, in 2023. Most years, 100 million or more visit Mt Fuji, which, along with Kamikochi, is the only other destination designated by Japan's Cultural Affairs Agency as both a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Natural Monument. We were also pleased to discover that many of Kamikochi's visitors are day-trippers who disappear by late afternoon. After the initial crush of tourists we'd seen at the Kappa bridge on our first afternoon, Kamikochi didn't seem overly touristy or spoiled.  

"Where do you live?" I asked one of the friendly restaurant servers at our hotel. "In a dormitory for workers right back there," she replied, pointing behind the hotel's annex.  She explained that Kamikochi is only open to visitors from 27 April to 15 November because it's too cold in winter to attract guests. On those dates, elaborate opening and closing ceremonies take place, presided over by Shinto priests who give thanks to nature as revellers indulge in cups of hot sake. There's also a popular boat festival in October, but in the offseason, it's a ghost town and workers like our server migrate elsewhere.

More like this:

• 10 sustainable travel destinations to visit in 2024

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I asked if she enjoys living in such a transient place, and the young woman pulled out her phone to answer my question. "Last week, I went on a long hike and took these," she said, swiping through some striking photos of Taisho Pond, a large body of water flanked by volcanic, snow-capped Mt Yakedake, which erupted in 1915, effectively damming the Azusa River and creating this picturesque pond. "This is why I'm happy here."

Taisho Pond, the end point of our final hike, was indeed stunning. The craggy mountains with their serpentine dustings of snow looked like something out of a fantasy world created by Akutagawa, the writer who took his own life at age 35 shortly after the publication of Kappa. In the novel, the protagonist visits Kamikochi in search of tranquillity, but finds the place inhabited by a strange race of 1m-tall, sumo-loving water spirits he called kappas.

We encountered nothing so strange, though my sons strongly objected to the nudity in the onsen (natural hot springs). But we found that Japan's conservation efforts to preserve the wild beauty of Kamikochi that seduced Weston, Akutagawa and others have largely succeeded. Indeed, there aren't many places left where you can enjoy a car-free holiday in a place where you're guaranteed to hear birdsong rather than car horns and see snow monkeys but no McDonalds.

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'It was a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea': The US homes made from waste materials

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241002-the-us-homes-made-from-waste-materials, today

Earthships are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, such as that around Taos, where extreme weather runs from sub-zero in winter to sweltering in summer.

Venture into New Mexico's beautifully stark high desert and you may well stumble across some fantastical and unconventional homes – some palatial and sculpturally rounded; others with an ancient temple-like form – that look like they're from a Star Wars movie.

Set in and around the town of Taos where they were invented almost 40 years ago, these are Earthships: net-zero, sustainably designed homes built mostly from both natural and waste materials, such as old tyres, empty wine bottles and wood and mud.

Since Earthship construction requires less in the way of toxic or carbon-emitting construction materials like concrete and plastics, and doesn't require precious woodland and other natural resources, these exquisite homes are increasingly sought after worldwide. Earthships sell for anything from around $500,000 to $900,000 (£376,000 to £677,000) and are also available for overnight stays in and near Taos for around $240 (£180) per night.

The Earthship movement began in Taos in the 1970s after Kentucky native Michael Reynolds, founder of eco-construction company Earthship Biotecture, moved here in 1969 with an architecture degree. His goal: to "ride dirt bikes, for fun," he says. 

The now-71-year-old soon had an a-ha moment.

"I saw [CBS News anchor] Walter Cronkite on the news talking about clear-cutting forests for timber and creating not only erosion, but an oxygen problem because the trees put out oxygen," Reynolds tells the BBC. "He was talking about what we call climate change and global warming now. I was seeing all these beer cans tossed away and I'm saying, 'why don't we build out of beer cans and not trees?'"

Reynolds built his beer-can house in 1971, gaining small notice in the news for its quirkiness. Yet, it went on to be exhibited in various parts of the world, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Reynolds notes, with some incredulity, "MoMA just bought a beer can brick for $4,500 (£3,386)." Indeed, after using one of the building blocks made of beer cans in an exhibit, the museum decided to add one to its permanent collection.

Still, for years he was largely looked at as a kook at best, and not a serious architect. 

"It was a kind of a pie-in-the-sky ridiculous idea, but I went ahead and started going in that direction," Reynolds says. "I started using bottles and I started using tyres, and I kept going. I've been in this direction for easily 55 years, and then around 36 years ago I first labelled a home as an Earthship."

But it's taken a long time to get to the point of wider acceptance. "You know, they looked too weird and they still look strange, but now people are getting it, and they're also open to it because [many people] are two paycheques away from being homeless and getting crippled by electric and utility bills," Reynolds says of the financially empowering aspect of living off-grid. "And now people want to reverse climate change."

Taos is a place that has long attracted artists and individualists. Its ancient pueblo (village) and newer town have striking architecture, mostly traditional viga-beamed adobe homes, whose roofs are made of wood and beaten earth. Taos was the perfect incubator for Earthships, which have a thick wall of tyres, each packed with earth.

An earth berm (a purposefully built bank of soil) surrounds the Earthship on three sides, providing insulating mass that controls temperature. Cooling is via traditional transom windows set up high on supporting beams to cross ventilate, and the building's pipe vents. Each has a greenhouse (as Reynolds believes people should have to ability to grow their own food), either on the north or south side depending on location. Most Earthships are purely solar powered; some also have wind turbines to supplement or a wood-burning stove as back up.

Taos has cold snowy winters and often dry, hot summers, but in an Earthship, the internal temperature remains close to 72F (21C) year-round, regardless of outside weather conditions.

Reynolds moved into his first Earthship 35 years ago, he says, and raised his family there – he still lives there: "It's so comfy we don't want to leave it," he shrugs.

What does it feel like to stay inside an Earthship? "It feels like you're inside the womb," says Earthship construction manager Deborah Binder. "You feel constantly hugged and snuggled. The temperature is always comfortable. Sometimes, when it's really cold outside I'll walk out without a coat not realising, because it's so warm inside."

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Binder came on board 11 years ago to manage a non-profit project in Malawi, Africa, without any background in construction, she says. Not only did she stay with the company, she moved to Taos and currently rents an Earthship while she builds her own. Binder also teaches at the Earthship Academy, which attracts attendees of all types to learn Earthship design principles, construction methods and philosophy.

"Most people want to learn for themselves," Binder says. "Some learn to build for community projects."

Despite their environmental appeal, Earthships are still not accepted as an option to ease the housing and climate change crisis. "They're still on the fringe in a way," says Binder. "It's really important for people to stay in one. The feeling you have living in them is unique, but on a practical level you don't pay any utility bills. That's quite amazing."

"Once people experience them, they usually want one," Reynolds adds, something that is borne out by the many glowing testimonials in the guestbooks placed in each Earthship rental.

Reynolds believes it could not be more timely – urgent even – to make Earthships the norm. His goal is to build rentable community housing as an answer to homelessness and planet-devastating energy consumption. "I'm not that interested in commissions; having a client just slows me down," he says. "I need to turn them out fast and lease them to people for a fair rent."

Reynolds is full steam ahead with his latest streamlined Refuge Earthship model, which he thinks could help with homelessness and poverty due to the simple economics of not paying huge utility bills each month. "Refuge is the most economical model to build; the one we are going to replicate all over the globe," he says passionately.

Then there is the whimsical Atlantis, a striking curvy turquoise Earthship, created as an example of the buildings' sculptural, artful side.

"There is an art side to them — I've played with the bottles as stained glass, and there's the sculptural aspect. They are beautiful," says Reynolds, who put himself through college by working as an artist. "What's really beautiful is they take care of people while taking care of the planet. There is not as much meaning in art as there is in a home."

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How to prepare an Indigenous holiday meal

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241115-chef-ben-jacobs-on-how-to-prepare-an-indigenous-holiday-meal, today

Ben Jacobs, one of the US's premier Native chefs, explains how to make a celebratory feast that tells "a story of people and place".

Ben Jacobs is on a mission. The Denver, Colorado-based chef and entrepreneur wants to make Native foods more accessible to the public and educate people about Indigenous culinary traditions across the United States. To do this, he's opened the Native American restaurant Tocabe; a meal-delivery service called Harvest Meals featuring Native recipes; and the e-commerce site Tocabe Indigenous Marketplace, which connects Native American food suppliers with customers around the country. 

As a result, Jacobs is a driving force in a nationwide movement to reclaim Native cuisine. Sixteen years after Tocabe's opening, he's opening an additional location in Denver's Airport in 2025 and the thriving Marketplace donates thousands of meals to communities in need each month. In 2023, Jacobs was also appointed to President Biden's Council on Sports, Food and Nutrition, which helps him further amplify Native foods, culture and community by spearheading programmes like the recent One Lacrosse Gathering on the National Mall.

"With over 570 federally-recognised [Native] tribes – and more that are not federally recognised [by the US government] – there is a massive population of people we are fortunate to represent and help to share the story of their food," Jacobs tells the BBC. "My origins are in the Osage Nation, but we are all working against a food system that was methodically deconstructed [by the US government for centuries]. There's still a long road ahead, and it's not just [Tocabe's] story – it's all of ours." 

As many families gather this season to celebrate the holidays, we asked Jacobs how he might prepare a feast in his own home that reflects his heritage.

"When I think about creating a celebratory feast," Jacobs says, "I go beyond Osage-specific ingredients and traditions because I want people to see that all different Native elements are a part of it."

For Osage Nation members and many other Native American tribes, holiday and celebratory meals are communal affairs, served family style, with everything laid out in the centre of a long table in large bowls.

Jacobs' holiday meal is full of layered flavours – richness from meats, citrus from sumac, tartness from berries, sweetness from honey and maple syrup, freshness from vegetables – and the approach can be modified depending on whether you're in a home kitchen or have access to a smoker or open fire.

Bison tender steak with a huckleberry glaze 

Bison was a staple food in Native American communities for centuries before their systemic eradication. Jacobs explains that the animal's meat was a valuable resource for many communities, including Osage, and supported year-round sustenance. "We select this cut [a petite tender located near the shoulder] due to the tenderness of the meat. Because bison is so lean, you have to be thoughtful with how it is prepared. The tender is exactly that: tender, while remaining juicy and incredibly flavourful. Berries pair really well with bison and wild game meats, and we enjoy the balance," he says. 

To prepare the meat, Jacobs recommends rubbing dried sage, salt and pepper into the steak and searing it on each side until it's medium-rare. "For the glaze, you can use whatever berry is accessible to you, but I like huckleberries. Slowly render the berries down with a touch of honey – you don't want it overly sweetened; you're just balancing the tartness of the berries with the honey. Serve the bison steak sliced with the glaze poured over top," he says.

Duck breast with sumac and honey

"Our [duck breast] recipe was inspired by a former principal chief of the Osage Nation, Sylvester Tinker. In 1956, when my mother was 10 years old, he and his wife gave her a cookbook they'd created that covered many methods of Osage cooking. Consistent with our approach, we added our expression to [it with] citrus notes of the sumac glaze balancing the rich fattiness of the duck," he says.

Jacobs prefers to age the duck breast by air-drying it in a cooler for a minimum of five days. He then sears it in a cast iron pan, skin side down. "For the sumac and honey, I make a tea with indigenous herbs like elderflower, nettle, cherry bark, sunflower and rose hip. Reduce the tea down and add wildflower honey to infuse a deeper floral flavour along with the sumac. Slice and plate the duck breast and lightly glaze with the infused honey."

Smoked butternut squash soup 

"I like to use honeynut squash, but you can use hubbard, butternut or acorn squash, too," Jacobs says. "For ease, put them in the oven to soften. I'd also soften them first in an oven, but then put them on an open fire with blackjack wood – which you can find on Osage land – to add smoky flavour notes. When the squash is cooked, remove the skin and blend it into a thin puree with a vegetable or chicken stock. We use a corn stock to infuse the corn aroma into the smoky creaminess of the squash. Top it off with toasted pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, and a drizzle of pumpkin seed oil."

Tepary bean green chilli salad with charred cactus paddle (nopales) 

As Jacobs explains: "The tepary bean doesn't have history in Osage cooking, but it's more [a] part of how we cook now with Tocabe. Some of my favourite ingredients are in this dish and come from Colorado and the Southwest, like the chillies and beans and cactus paddles." 

Jacobs loves this dish because of how its unique ingredients pair nicely with one another. Here's how he recommends preparing it: "Roast or open fire char your green and poblano chillies and cactus paddle. Remove the skin from the chillies and dice it all up, along with yellow bell pepper, slightly larger than the tepary bean. Make a light vinaigrette with mostly olive oil and a little bit of acid in there – apple cider vinegar is great – and toss it all together. It depends on the time of year, but add a wild onion or scallion to open everything up."

Green salad with amaranth, shaved squash and a maple vinaigrette

Native American food is very vegetable-forward, and the types vary depending on the season: locally-sourced greens and wild harvested greens in the summer, root vegetables in the winter.

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"Use whatever dark, leafy greens that you have access to. I like to add amaranth microgreens for flavour and colour notes," Jacobs says. "Using a seasonal [raw, shaved] squash is great on this salad… Make a mild vinaigrette with apple cider vinegar, olive oil and maple syrup, and finish off with some smoked salt. The point of this meal is to balance all the textural components of the richness, the sweetness, freshness and smokiness, and the smoked salt adds that little something to help do that."

Fry bread

Fry bread (a flour-based dough that's flash-fried or deep fried in oil or lard until it's browned or fluffy) is one of the most recognisable Native foods in the US, but as Jacobs explained, "it's got a conflicting past and even present. It's a food that came out of the reservation relocation era [beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through the Indian Relocation Act of 1956]. It was created from government commodities that were provided to forcefully relocated communities," Jacobs says. "We as Native peoples are not all the same; we are tribally, culturally, regionally different. But fry bread is the one recipe that is most closely related across communities: everyone has a variation on the recipe, but it does tie us together, so I always embrace it."

As such, Jacobs chooses to include it because of its cultural significance across Native Nations and highlights the traditional Osage style of preparing it: "Cut into small squares [that become] puffy when cooked," he explains.

Grilled bannock bread 

Though closely related, Jacobs explains that bannock bread and fry bread contribute to an Indigenous feast in different ways. "Personally, I would have both of these breads on my table because they both serve different purposes. For me, fry bread is for dipping into the butternut squash soup, and the bannock bread is to put my tepary bean salad in."

Bannock bread and fry bread are also prepared in a similar way. "This is made with the same dough as fry bread. Take the dough and grill it on an open fire so it puffs and chars. Then brush it lightly with olive oil and smoked salt."

Yonkapin

"Yonkapin is a water lily root and is a traditional Osage ingredient," said Jacobs, noting that it used to be foraged in ponds across the Osage Nation. "You would step into the water and would feel around with your feet where to pull it out. It's one of my favourite things to eat and to cook; they're versatile, too. Traditionally, you might just put yonkapin in a soup, but I like to shave it really thin with a mandolin and quick fry it, so it turns into a chip. You can eat them as a side, or you can crumble them on top of the bean salad, or I even like to dip it into the butternut squash soup."

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Is the future of French cheese at stake?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241101-is-the-future-of-french-cheese-at-stake, today

Earlier this year, cheese fans panicked following the publication of new research on essential cheesemaking moulds, certain the end was nigh for beloved Brie and Camembert.

It was an outsized reaction, according to Jeanne Ropars, the co-author of the very study that made such noise in the first place. "I must emphasise that there is no production problem, in the short term, for cheeses," she said. "Even for Camembert." 

That said, the news did provide an opportunity to examine the cheesescape at large, where certain beloved creations are indeed endangered.

The worries about Camembert's future arose following the publication of a brief penned by Ropars and Tatiana Giraud, research director at the CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research), regarding a newly discovered population of Penicillium roqueforti, the mould that gives blue cheese its azure veins. The researchers took advantage of the discovery to highlight a "drastic loss of diversity" in cheesemaking ferments, notably citing their own 2020 research on genetic degradation of moulds populating Camembert's rind, which, to be fair, have been doomed for more than a century.

Camembert and its bloomy cousins like French Brie, English Baron Bigod and American Mt Tam get their white, mushroom-scented exteriors from just one strain of mould, Penicillium camemberti var camemberti, an albino mutant isolated in 1897 in the Brie region from a panoply of such fungi that had long proliferated in ageing cellars. In sprinkling this mutant mould onto the sterilised surfaces of their cheese, cheesemakers supplanted the colourful rinds' variety of moulds and bacteria ranging from red to blue to green to grey with pure, downy white.

"The market demanded it," said Arnaud Sperat-Czar, president of the Fondation pour la Biodiversité Fromagère. "[People] preferred a beautiful white cheese with pretty down, as opposed to a cheese that looked a bit mouldy."

This desire for homogeneity, however, has come at a cost. Today, all Penicillium camemberti var camemberti is cloned from that same mutant spore, making it incapable of sexual reproduction. "Naturally," said Ropars. "You can't cross an individual with its clone."

This lack of genetic diversity means the spore is unable to evolve and adapt, the crux of the issue that led to the brouhaha seeming to signal Camembert's demise. But the problem isn't without solutions, especially if the cheese world is willing to sacrifice some of that long sought-after uniformity. After all, Penicillium camemberti var camemberti is far from the only mould that gives rise to a bloomy rind. P camemberti v caseifulvum, according to Ropars, is a genetically similar strain, albeit with a slightly less fluffy texture; and its once-common relative, P biforme, which boasts a diversity in colour ranging from white to blue-grey, could be used as is for a more diverse colour palette, or re-isolated to encourage the pale colour we've become used to. And there's no rush to decide.

"There are so many producers, and so many parent strains, that no one, at the end of the day, is worried about the end of Camembert," said Sperat-Czar. 

Cheesemaker Pierre Coulon, founder of La Laiterie de Camembert, agrees. "It's really just the buzz effect, as usual," he said. "That's not what's going to make cheese disappear."

But other issues might.

In Normandy, Coulon said, "it's been raining since July," and even in this famously damp region, humidity is posing unprecedented problems, from a proliferation of new, unsought-after moulds on his Camemberts to ground so waterlogged that cows can't be put out to pasture.

In other regions, climate change has given rise to such dry summers that not only are milk yields dropping, according to Profession Fromager, but the texture and flavour of the finished product is changing. Hot weather can lead to a degradation in the very quality of an animal's milk, with lower casein and mineral contents that make it more difficult to make good cheese. 

In Switzerland, warming temperatures have led to local purple mountain saxifrage being supplanted with plant species more common in the Mediterranean, according to Université de Lausanne's l'Uniscope, diminishing the intense, savoury aroma that high-altitude Étivaz cheese was once known for. 

And central France's Salers and Grand Aubrac are at risk of disappearing entirely. Much like Champagne, 46 French cheeses sport an Appellation d'Origine Protégée label. Each AOP is governed by a charter established by local producers dictating its means of production. "An AOP is, at its heart, about its connection, a product's connection to place, its history," explained cheese educator Sue Sturman.

To wit, both Auvergnat Salers and Aveyronnais Grand Aubrac are traditionally made in summer, when cows can graze on high-mountain pastures. But unseasonable dryness last summer forced farmers to supplement their cattle's feed with hay and thus to temporarily cease making these cheeses in favour of the Laguiole and Cantal typically made in the winter, both of which fetch a lower price.

The producers behind some AOPs are currently at work to modify their charters to account for these changing conditions. "It's about adapting," said Yves Soulhol, managing director of Laguiole's Jeune Montagne cooperative. "It's not complicated, but it demands adaptation."

But other regulations are harder to get around, especially those that come from further afield. Producers of raw milk cheeses are facing ever stricter regulations from the EU, especially as the scientific ability to detect STECs (Shigatoxigenic E coli) becomes more reliable, according to Soulhol. In France, he said, "we're lucky – people like raw milk. But on European and worldwide levels, excuse my rudeness, but it's a pain in the arse." 

Some regulations also pose a threat to traditional cheesemaking methods. Last year, proposed European legislation that would have supplanted traditional wooden cheese packaging in favour of more recyclable materials risked sounding a death knell for the very flavours of Jurassian Mont d'Or or Savoyard Manigodine, which glean their distinct aromas from being aged in direct contact with bands of spruce. 

While this legislation was ultimately voted down by the European parliament, other measures threaten Saint-Nectaire, an Auvergnat cheese traditionally aged in caves forged in volcanic magma that, according to producer Caroline Borrel, have naturally become naturally rich in the exact mould spores they need to age the cheeses to perfection. But hygiene norms that Borrel characterises as "ever-more constraining" point to potential loss of these methods. Traditional wooden Saint-Nectaire moulds are already forbidden to cheesemakers, and according to Borrel, "They're doing whatever they can to incite us to reduce the use of natural cellars." 

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Producers, Borrel said, "are collapsing under the weight of the norms and obligations". Some are shedding their AOPs – despite the higher price point the label fetches. Others are leaving the industry entirely. And due to "constant and continual" checks and mountains of paperwork that turn an already full-time job into an impossibility, "the biggest factor threatening the future of Saint-Nectaire and other cheeses is the constant decline of people to take over", she said.

And this, according to Sturman, "is true right across every sector in farming in France."

"Farmers have the highest suicide rate of any population," she said. "It is incredibly difficult to live as a farmer. It is incredibly difficult to make ends meet as a farmer. It is a seven-day-a-week job."

As a result, said Sperat-Czar, "many farms have closed, and others will, because there's no one to take over."

But in recent years, a slew of young people have abandoned urban centres and careers in insurance or banking to work in food-related sectors. Sperat-Czar has seen this in cheese distribution and has high hopes it will trickle into the production side too. With Fondation du Lait Cru, he is launching a project to help support those looking to transition into the sector, matching them up with farms and offering courses via distance learning to complement the on-the-ground training.

"To all these people who are asking questions about their future and their role in society," he said, "we're going to tell them there are farms to take over. There are production facilities where they can work to make traditional products, terroir-driven products, raw milk products." 

With help from this young generation, there may still be hope for the future of French fromage.

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Kamayan feasts: The 'hands-only' meals that bring Filipinos together

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241024-kamayan-feasts-the-hands-only-meals-that-bring-filipinos-together, today

Swept aside by colonialism, this ancient tradition is being reclaimed by a new generation of Filipino chefs who are introducing it to the world.

On an early Friday evening, customers slowly filtered out of a small Filipino restaurant in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood. Rattan-wrapped fixtures hung from the ceiling, bouncing light off the dining room's white-brick interior and mirrored wall, and the wafting scents of garlic and vinegar filled the modest 400-sq-ft space.

During its normal restaurant hours, Tradisyon is a quick-service spot serving familiar Filipino comfort fare, like adobo-rice bowls and noodle dishes. But as night settles, something special brews in the back kitchen.

After all the regular dinner guests left, chef Anton Dayrit and his team combined all the restaurant's tables and chairs so they ran the entire length of the dining room. Moving swiftly past each other in a rehearsed choreography, they wrapped the conjoined table in foil and laid several four-foot-long banana leaves across it for an incoming 20-person meal, a dinner package that anyone can book by phone or email.

This wasn't just any dinner but a version of kamayan: a communal Filipino feast where all the food is laid out on the leafy greens and instead of using plates or utensils, everything is eaten with your hands ("kamayan" in Tagalog). Much like a Japanese omakase meal, the dishes served during a kamayan feast vary depending on the vision of the chef who cooks it. The idea is to present a cornucopia of classic Filipino foods that complement each other when eaten together.

Eating with one's hands is something that's practiced in many West African, Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. But unlike in other regions where the custom has persisted for centuries, kamayan-style dining harkens back to the Philippines' Indigenous roots but was largely swept aside during Spanish rule, starting in the 16th Century. The practice therefore not only serves as a reminder of how Filipinos ate before colonialism and a physical connection to Filipino heritage, but also as a way of preserving that cultural history in Filipino communities around the world.

In the Philippines today, kamayan meals are typically prepared on important family occasions, like birthdays, holidays and reunions, and are also offered on some restaurant menus. But these feasts have been regarded with a renewed sense of dignity among Filipino and Filipino American chefs, who are keeping the tradition alive in their restaurants and introducing it to a new set of diners abroad. Tradisyon is one of a handful of restaurants in Manhattan offering these hand-eaten kamayan feasts as special packages for big groups.

Compared to other Asian cuisines like Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese that have become ubiquitous in major cities, Filipino food has had a much quieter international presence. This may be partly due to the nation's incredible diversity: more than 100 ethnic groups, each with different languages, cultures and culinary practices, call the archipelago home, making it more difficult to pin down what, exactly, Filipino food is.

But thanks to praise from US celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain (who proclaimed his love for the sizzling pork dish sisig) and Andrew Zimmern (who recently told the BBC, "It combines all the best Asian techniques, textures and flavours… Filipino food is just as good as it gets"), Filipino cuisine has flourished over the past decade – especially as chefs in the States have spun Filipino dishes in ways that have gradually introduced its flavours to foreign palates.

Filipino food and its communal meals recently trended on social media, and the growing popularity of dishes like kare-kare (oxtail in a peanut stew), pancit (a Filipino noodle dish) and the nation's now-famous technicolour yam ube led food research company Tastewise to recently name Filipino food as one of the "most disruptive food and beverage trends of 2025".

Nicole Ponseca, a Filipino chef and James Beard Award finalist who was integral in popularising restaurant-set kamayan feasts in New York City, recalled growing up somewhat ashamed of seeing family members eating with their hands. "When I opened my first restaurant, it was always in the back of my head to turn everything I was embarrassed about into something I could lean into for a source of integrity and self-esteem," she said. That first restaurant was Jeepney, a former East Village gem whose kamayan menu included a selection of seasoned pork, whole fish and marinated beef, alongside lumpia (egg rolls), deep-fried shrimp and sweet longanisa pork sausage. Recently, Ponseca has started a similar kamayan concept in Miami.

Dayrit considers kamayan feasts the "ultimate get-together meal". As a child on the beaches of Boracay and Puerto Galera, he remembers watching his yayas (nannies or caretakers) cooking up what he considered "Michelin-grade" food by the sea. "You're on the beach, you don't have any utensils, but you've got everything [you need]," he said. "You've got a grill to cook, you've got a fire going, a table and banana leaves."

Back at Tradisyon, Dayrit and his team continued setting up their kamayan dinner. With blowtorches, chefs charred the glossy banana leaves as an almost sacrosanct precursor to the procession of food. Flitting back-and-forth from the kitchen, the crew carried out pounds of meat, seafood and vegetable concoctions, distributing them across the table.

First, a bed of steamed white and fragrant garlic rice was spooned in a line down the centre of the leaves. Next, they placed pieces of smoky grilled pork and barbecued chicken, and large pata (deep-fried pork knuckle) with crispy golden-brown skin and succulent meat. Garlic chili butter prawns, sauteed bok choy and whole fried dorado fish cradled the spaces around the meats, and an aromatic jus was poured onto the rice mounds. The spread was finished with a colourful medley of dragonfruit, pomegranate and pineapple slices.

As the preparation wrapped up, I spoke with diners congregating outside who were watching the chefs construct the kamayan table through the window.

"Even though I've visited the Philippines occasionally over the years and have heard of kamayan, I had never actually tried it myself," said Kimberly Remijan, who booked the feast to celebrate her birthday with friends. "Being half-Filipina, I wanted to show my friends a part of Pinoy [a colloquial term for Filipino] culture. A huge part of Pinoy culture is food."

As the group finally filtered into the tight space, they emitted a mix of "oohs" and "aahs" before settling around the table. Dayrit showed the group the "proper" way to kamayan. With one hand, they pressed meats into a padding of rice and wrapped it into a sort of rice pouch with the tip of their fingers. After dipping the mound in a spicy vinegar sauce, they brought the food up using their thumb to deliver the food from the fingers to the mouth without the fingers entering the mouth. It's a skill that requires some practice.

"There's actual chemistry when you touch food with your hands and put it in your mouth," said Dayrit. "It somehow tastes better; I can't explain it."

As I marvelled at the elaborate spread before me, laughing and chatting with the diners, it felt as though I had been welcomed into this tight-knit group of friends. It was an inviting warmth that transported me back to my Filipino family and the many kamayan feasts they recalled enjoying over the years. My father once told me about bayanihan, a Tagalog word that means "being a community". Bayanihan represents a spirit of hospitality and kindness akin to treating others like family, and that spirit permeates the kamayan dinner.

"Before we might be eating in the shadows of our kitchen with our hands out of embarrassment. Now it's on full display," said Ponseca. "Our food is love, and kamayan is about abundance, it's about joy, it's about sharing. In its modern version, it's about pride."

BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.

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The mystery of one of Italy's most iconic pastas

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241024-tortellini-the-mystery-of-one-of-italys-most-iconic-pastas, today

For centuries, residents of Emilia-Romagna have disagreed about which of its two main cities invented tortellini, but the truth may be neither did.

I'm seated at the three-Michelin starred Osteria Francescana, and can't believe my luck. It's been eight years since I first attempted to snag a reservation at the coveted restaurant in Modena, Italy, helmed by Massimo Bottura, one of the world's most influential chefs. I've been to Italy nearly 50 times since 2016, and each visit, I prowl the restaurant's website, even setting alarms at odd hours, to no avail.

But one week ago, from my hotel in Tuscany, I saw a 12:30 lunch cancellation and pounced. And now I'm finally here, in a world of chic Gucci wallpaper and dim lighting, about to try the famous 15-course tasting menu for myself.

I'm savouring "Tortellini or Dumplings?" – a Korean spin on tortellini in brodo (tortellini soup) where Osteria Francescana serves twisted dumplings in seaweed stock instead of traditional capon broth – when Bottura himself walks in. The desire to eat at one of the world's best restaurants is what initially piqued my interest in this place, but what brought me here tonight is the delicious bite on my spoon: tortellini.

Tortellini – a circular-shaped pasta, twisted around a filling of mortadella, prosciutto, pork loin and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese – are the quintessential pasta varietal here in Italy's hilly Emilia-Romagna region. But while there is no question that tortellini hails from Emilia-Romagna, scholars, chefs and locals have bickered for centuries about which of the region's two rival medieval powerhouses can lay claim to the honour: Modena or Bologna?

I am sure Bottura knows; he's not only from Modena, but is also famed for his innovative tortellini dishes, inspired by childhood memories of sitting under his grandmother's table as she prepared the meaty morsels. As he stops to greet me, I asked him where tortellini were invented: Modena or Bologna?

"Neither," he says, his arms sprawling as wide as his smile. "It's Castelfranco Emilia."

His answer stops me mid-bite. Castelfranco Emilia is a small town located between Modena and Bologna. It is indeed famous for its sfogline (pasta makers), but this was the first I'd heard of its connection to tortellini. I left Osteria Francescana with more questions than answers.

The "Modena-versus-Bologna" tortellini debate had intrigued me ever since visiting the Palazzo Comunale di Modena; home to the Stolen Bucket. This was where I first learned that Modena and Bologna's feud goes back to the Middle Ages when the cities were entwined in a bitter religious rivalry that lasted more than 300 years (Modena supported the Holy Roman Empire; Bologna supported the Popes). In 1325, during one of the war's skirmishes, Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a city well in Bologna; a war trophy.

What follows next is delicious myth: in 1622, Modenese poet Alessandro Tassoni wrote La Secchia Rapita (The Stolen Bucket), a parody of the events where the Olympic gods descend to aid in the fight; Apollo and Minerva sided with Bologna, while Mars, Venus and Bacchus sided with Modena.

Then, in the late 19th Century, Italian poet Giuseppe Ceri nodded to Tassoni and the medieval-era Modena-Bologna-bucket conflict in his own poem, The Bellybutton of Venus, writing that after the gods came down to intervene, they took a detour to Castelfranco Emilia. The fateful side trip results in tortellini.

There are a few variations of the myth, but the most popular version goes like this: Venus, Bacchus and Mars walk into an inn in Castelfranco Emilia. The following morning, Venus is sleeping naked and alone, and the innkeeper, infatuated with her beauty, peeps through the keyhole and sees her exposed belly button. Inspired by its shape, he creates tortellini.

What's unclear is whether there is any historical truth that led Ceri to set this scene in Castelfranco Emilia. Centuries earlier, sometime between 1688 and 1690, the priest and historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori wrote that he ate minestra di tortellini (tortellini soup) in Castelfranco Emilia. It may be impossible to prove that tortellini were in fact native to that city (or that Ceri had ever read the account), but today in Castelfranco Emilia, there is a statue of the innkeeper peeping through the keyhole to see Venus' belly button.

Hungrier than ever for the truth after my encounter with Bottura, I reached out to a series of local chefs to get to the bottom of the matter and found that many people today – even the region of Emilia-Romagna's website – embrace Castelfranco Emilia's role as the mythical birthplace of tortellini.

"The idea of [tortellini] was born in a small village, Castelfranco Emilia, in between Bologna and Modena," said chef Aurora Mazzucchelli of Casa Mazzucchelli, a Michelin-star restaurant in Sasso Marconi, a province of Bologna, when I asked her where tortellini were invented.

"The debate has been settled," said chef Ottavio Gnazzo, the chef de cuisine at Rezdôra, a New York restaurant serving Emilia-Romagnan cuisine helmed by Bottura mentee chef Stefano Secchi. "We know tortellini comes from Castelfranco Emilia." 

However, despite the general consensus that Castelfranco Emilia is the beloved pasta's birthplace, there is still some speculation.

"We are sure that tortellini come from Bologna," said Monica Venturi of Bologna's Le Sfogline. Venturi grew up in Bologna, where her family has been running the small handmade pasta shop since 1996.  "When tortellini were made for the first time, Castelfranco Emilia was under Bologna."

Secchi himself doesn't necessarily disagree but adds context. "The issue is that tortellini were first made in Castelfranco Emilia. [We know of] the legend of Venus's bellybutton, but Castelfranco Emilia has been a province of both Modena and Bologna, so [it] will be tough to ultimately decide."

Its exact geographical origins aren't the only dispute surrounding this stuffed pasta. In Bologna, tortellini are often much smaller than tortellini from Modena and Castelfranco Emilia; called tortellini al mignolo (pinky finger tortellini). And, "In Bologna, we normally use raw filling, while in Modena, they normally use cooked [browned in butter] filling," added Mazzucchelli. "I personally like raw stuffing because it allows me to work with a more solid texture."

Back in Modena, Francesco Vincenzi is head chef of Franceschetta58, a casual bistro opened by Bottura that serves bold, modern Modenese cuisine, so Vincenzi has a different take on the recipe.

"Our tortellini filling is not quite blanched, not quite cooked, but in between," he said.

Traditionally, tortellini are served in brodo (broth) or panna (heavy cream) but restaurants like Francescetta58 are serving them in a decadent Parmigiano cream instead; a shock to tortellini purists.

"I don't like when they try to change the recipe of this type of tradition," Venturi said. "Tortellini must be cooked in the broth, boiled and then eaten with the broth."

Fillings, cities and regional variations aside, there is one factor that Emilia-Romagnans generally agree on: making tortellini is a family affair. The task is largely attributed to the rezdôra, or the "head of the household", in Modenese dialect, which refers to the women who roll out pasta by hand.

Gnazzo, who was born in the US but raised in Italy, grew up in the kitchen watching his father; also a chef. He reflected on watching rezdôre in Bologna for the first time.

"They're masters at making pasta, so when I went to Bologna and saw them making tortellini, I bought some, and we made it there; the right way in capon stock," he said.

Mazzucchelli has fond early memories of tortellini, too. "I used to make tortellini with my mom and dad. It was a significant moment around the table to help pinch shut the tortellini."

Tortellini are Emilia-Romagnan culture at its core, commonly enjoyed in celebration around Christmas time and the Feast of Saint Stephen (Boxing Day). The circular-shaped pasta is so tied to the region that La San Nicola Association hosts an annual Tortellini Festival (Sagra del Tortellino) in Castelfranco Emilia during the second week of September. The festival lasts one week, with each night featuring a tortellini dish from a restaurant in the region. On the final night, there's a live performance that reenacts the innkeeper peeping through the keyhole.   

As evidenced by his "Tortellini or Dumplings?" and "Tortellini Walking on Broth" dishes, Bottura has no qualms about reinventing the beloved pasta. But to ensure that tortellini tradition isn't lost, Bottura and his wife and business partner Lara Gilmore opened Tortellante, a cooking school in Modena where elderly women teach young adults with autism how to make tortellini.

So, which city invented tortellini – Bologna, Modena or Castelfranco Emilia? The world may never know for sure, but one thing is certain: tortellini is one of the most defining foods of the Emilia-Romagna region.

As Bottura enthusiastically told me, "Even if you don't believe in God, you can believe in tortellini."

Recipe for tortellini

by Chef Ottavio Gnazzo on behalf of Rezdôra

Method

Step 1

In a tabletop mixer, add the flour and make a well. In a small bowl, mix the eggs with the olive oil, then add the mixture to the mixer. Mix the dough on low speed for 10 minutes, pat into a flat disc or ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Leave at room temperature until ready to roll out.

Step 2

Add all the meats to a grinder on fine die setting and grind together. Transfer the meat mixture to a small bowl, then mix in the nutmeg, sea salt, Parmigiano and eggs to create a paste.

Step 3

Roll out the dough into a sheet to the last setting on the machine; it must be thin enough to slightly see the wooden board or hand underneath. Cut 1.5-2in squares in the dough with a wheel cutter with straight edges. Place a dot of filling in the centre of each square. Fold each square into a triangle by putting pressure on the edges to properly seal the triangle. Then, grab the two edges of the triangle, wrap it around the tip of your pinky and pinch it so it closes.

BBC.com's World's Table "smashes the kitchen ceiling" by changing the way the world thinks about food, through the past, present and future.

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'Set-jetting': How on-screen locations are becoming travel destinations

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241114-how-on-screen-locations-are-becoming-travel-destinations, today

Increasing numbers of travellers are seeking out the real-life filming locations of their favourite shows, even if the reality of life there is very different than how it's portrayed.

Filming for the third season of the Emmy-winning series The White Lotus has wrapped, and HBO released a teaser this week that revealed intriguing new cast details. When the first two seasons of the show were set in Hawaii and Sicily, respectively, Expedia noticed that searches for the destinations spiked by more than 300%. Similarly, traffic increased 160% for the London suburb of Richmond where Ted Lasso was filmed and 65% for Norway after it appeared in the final season of Succession. If these trends are any indication, the number of travellers searching for Bangkok, Phuket and Ko Samui (the filming locations for White Lotus season three), is likely to soon surge as well.

This phenomenon of "set-jetting", where travellers journey to the filming locations of popular shows and films, has been gaining traction for a few years. But thanks to its increasing popularity, Expedia named it one of its top travel trends of 2024.

Yet, while many travellers head to filming locations expecting these destinations to feel similar to their on-screen personas, the reality is often quite different. Sunny Los Angeles is often subject to overcast "June gloom" in the early summer, and laid-back Amsterdam has been cracking down on tourists who treat the city as just a party destination.

Another city that is often portrayed with an especially rosy glow is Paris. In fact, it's even known to have inspired a psychotic state among visitors. Known as Paris syndrome, this rare phenomenon can include heart palpitations, dizziness and even hallucinations, and it's believed to be brought on by a combination of culture shock and extreme disappointment that the French capital doesn't live up to its idealised portrayal.

So while the popularity of the Netflix show Emily in Paris has seen an increase in visitors to the city, some people are seemingly crushed to find that the City of Lights isn't always filled with high fashion and attractive single men. Instead, Parisians have a reputation for being a bit standoffish with visitors.  

"It's still a city," explained Afua Danso, a singer-songwriter and voice coach who has lived in both London and Paris. "[It still has] trash bags… [it still has] rats. To be honest, [I think] a lot of Parisians get annoyed with tourists because it's like, 'God, you have this whole romantic view of our city, and we're tired of our city, and we're also tired of you.'"

Another destination that looms large in the imagination of viewers and travellers alike is New York City. Fans of shows like And Just Like That, the sequel to the popular 1990s show Sex in the City, could be forgiven for expecting the Big Apple to be all glitz and glamour. Films and TV series often highlight New Yorkers' high-end lifestyles and suggest it's common for the average person to live in a spacious apartment overlooking Central Park. Yet, the size of the city's apartments on TV relative to what characters do for a living is often the butt of jokes among local residents.  

"My first apartment was on 30th [Street] and 8th [Avenue] right by Penn Station," said Taylor DeNapoli, a dancer and event planner. "It was the size of my bathroom now, with a shared bathroom and shower in the hallway. Safe to say, the apartments you see on TV are made for sets."

Similarly, Italy is often portrayed as being full of nothing but delicious food, quaint towns and beautiful people. Countless films and shows like the Netflix drama From Scratch have touted cities like Florence as the perfect place to go to fall in love. Meanwhile, the classic movie Under the Tuscan Sun has made many viewers consider the possibility of renovating a dilapidated Italian villa. This romanticised impression, however, can be far from the truth.

"The reality is that Italy is a beautiful, complicated, frustrating place," says Kathy McCabe, host of the PBS show Dream of Italy and founder of the eponymous magazine. "The bureaucracy seems like a stereotype, but it is a real thing. It can be difficult to get things done in Italy. Dealing with any kind of renovations… the movies sometimes make those seem romantic but, renovating an old house can take three, four or five times as long as it seems and costs that much more."

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• Bristol-wide 'set-jetting' map of Outlaws locations launched

• Blackpink star Lisa joins White Lotus for series three

One show that may have captured at least a bit of the experience of living in an iconic city is Fleabag, set in London. In it, the titular character's brash sense of humour often rubs fellow Londoners the wrong way. "London, in general, is more reserved," Danso explained.

Despite the less glamourous realities residents in these cities experience, they're adamant that they're still worth the visit. "New York can be glitz and glam on one block and then trash and grunge the next," said DeNapoli. "That is what makes it so special to me… Big or small [apartments], the city will always have a special place in my heart."

While how a destination is portrayed on screen may lure you to want to visit, it shouldn't serve as a blueprint of what to expect. In fact, if anything, many of these fictionalised portrayals reveal how not to best experience a place's unique local culture. For example, instead of spending so much time at their resorts, the guests in the first two seasons of The White Lotus might have gained a deeper understanding of Hawaiian and Italian culture had they met more locals.  

So while season three of the razor-sharp dark comedy is bound to be filled with drama and entitled wealthy travellers, here's hoping it will also feature plenty of scenes of Bangkok's frenetic night markets or Phuket's sleepy fishing villages – in addition to scenes of The White Lotus' luxury resort. After all, spending time as residents do, seeking out local experiences and shedding your expectations of what a place is "supposed" to be, may just deliver a more rewarding set-jetting experience.

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The spectacular dance contest that brings nations together

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241112-the-spectacular-dance-contest-that-brings-nations-together, today

There's no better place to see hoop dancers at the top of their game than at the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest in Phoenix, Arizona.

Sitting in a circle around a big drum, a group of men struck a deep, reverberating beat. Their voices rose and fell in harmony, while in the arena a dancer picked up speed. Spinning around, he locked six hoops around his shoulders and arms and flapped them like an eagle in flight, then snapped the hoops together to form a globe and held it up to the sky.

Held over two days each February in Phoenix, Arizona, the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest is the most prestigious celebration of a complex Indigenous dance style that requires speedy footwork and skilful mastery of up to as many as 50 hoops. It's the Olympics of hoop dancing – and the 2024 contest drew a record 121 dancers, representing dozens of Indigenous communities across the US and Canada, including children from the nearby Navajo Nation and a senior (as over-40s are classed) from the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. Inscrutable judges were positioned around the arena, pens in hand, ready to grade each dancer on five skills: precision, timing/rhythm, showmanship, creativity and speed. Up for grabs in each of the five divisions, which are sorted by age, not gender, were cash prizes totalling $25,000 (£19,400).

But, "it's more than winning and losing," says Terry Goedel, who has competed in the contest "probably" 28 times. "It's about holding your head with pride to the world and saying: This is who I am, and this is what I share with you."

The exact origin of hoop dance is a little muddled, but it is thought to have originated at the Taos Pueblo. According to ICT, many tribal groups across North America used the hoop to symbolise the circle of life in healing ceremonies. Today's modern form, which sees hoop dancers spin and interlock multiple hoops around their bodies to represent animals and other symbols, emerged in the 1930s when Tony White Cloud of the Jemez Pueblo began performing for entertainment rather than healing alone, creating visual symbols with his willow hoops as a method of storytelling.

White Cloud drew crowds and found fame as he performed at events across the US and appeared in films with Lucille Ball and Gene Autry. Indigenous people who saw him perform at events such as the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in New Mexico were inspired to develop their own styles, and soon modern hoop dance spread across North America.

Goedel, who is Yakama and Tulalip, was living on the Tulalip reservation in Washington when he saw hoop dancing for the first time in 1972. "It was as though a light had been lit inside of me," he says. Until that day, he had been struggling "to identify [his] Native roots". "When I found [them], I wanted to share those feelings with the world, because it made me feel so good… the pride that I have in my heritage."

Hoop dancing was a "a dying art" when he first started, according to Goedel. Even the first world championship, held in 1990, drew only seven dancers. Goedel credits the dance's survival partly to its embrace by Indigenous communities across North America. At the 2024 contest, this breadth was evidenced by the diversity of regalia worn by the dancers, from the orca adorning Goedel's silk shirt, which signifies his US north-western roots, to the buckskin clothing of dancers from the Plains and the three-feathered kastoweh headdress worn by a Mohawk dancer from the north-east.

* There's no better place than the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest, held each February at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (15-16 February 2025)

* At the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship (2-3 August 2025) is hosted by the Lightning Boy Foundation in honour of the late Nakotah LaRance, who was a nine-time world champion.

* Hoop dancing is occasionally performed at North American powwows, but on the New York/Ontario border, Feryn King and the Akwesasne Youth Troupe regularly appear at the Akwesasne Powwow in September and at the Akwesasne Art Market and Juried Show in July.

Hoop dance, Goedel says, "is handed down a lot by family". Often this sharing within families is about "trying to engage [children] in finding out who they are; identifying with their heritage," he says. Unlike other dances that require cost and labour-intensive regalia, starting out in hoop dancing requires only hoops. "When my son and my nephew began dancing with me more than 20 years ago, they had their tennis shoes on," Goedel says. "So it's kind of an avenue for them to slowly walk into the Native dance world."

For those without that family connection, there's the New Mexico-based Lightning Boy Foundation, whose mission is to connect young Indigenous people to their culture through hoop dancing. The foundation carries on the legacy of two beloved dancers who died at young ages: eight-year-old prodigy Valentino Rivera; and his mentor, the foundation's first instructor, nine-time world champion hoop dancer Nakotah LaRance. The foundation offers free hoop dance instruction to Indigenous youth aged 4-18, as well as materials and travel expenses for competitions, including its own Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship held annually at Santa Fe's Museum Of Indian Arts & Culture.

"Everything I know about hoop dancing, I learned from him," says ShanDien Sonwai LaRance of her brother Nakotah. LaRance, who is Hopi, Tewa, Navajo and Assiniboine, dances "with such fierceness and aggression, almost like the male dancers. That's a reflection of learning from my older brother," she says. "He was known for being one of the fastest dancers, and also for his really crazy, wild tricks and throws. So I've inherited those moves, and that's what we share and teach [at the] Lightning Boy Foundation."

LaRance has been dancing since she was eight and is now the foundation's master instructor. "Hoop dancing is a difficult dance to learn," she says, listing hand-to-eye coordination, speed, imagination and drive as some of its necessary attributes. But these challenges instil values in young dancers. "It teaches our young kids how to try and fail and continue to try. And realise that just because we drop a hoop doesn't mean we stop dancing. We pick it up and we act like nothing happened."

Over the past 15 years, LaRance has seen how hoop dancing has brought confidence to Indigenous youth. "It's a tangible piece of their culture that they can hold with them and take all over the world," she says. Indeed, LaRance and her brother both performed internationally with Cirque du Soleil.

In July 2024, a few months after the World Championships, I attended the Art Market and Juried Show in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne in upstate New York. There, Feryn King, an accomplished hoop dancer, aerialist and teacher, who has also performed internationally with Cirque du Soleil, stepped out in front of the crowd to give a short presentation on the hoop dance's origins in healing ceremonies. She explained that, even today, hoop dancing has the power to bring healing energy, for those watching as well as the dancers. Then, as a track blending traditional drumming, hip-hop and electronica started up, she and the Akwesasne Youth Hoop Troupe began dancing, lifting each foot off the ground in time with the rapid beats, spinning hoops around their bodies and fluttering them above their heads like butterfly wings.

King later tells me that she likes to begin performances with a short presentation because sometimes people mistake hoop dancing for hula hooping. "It's important for people to know the history," she says. Her distinctive choice of music, different to the austere drums and voices I'd heard at the World Championship, helps keep younger dancers engaged. "I try to create new choreography for them every year," she says. "I'm trying to inspire them and keep them dancing."

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King is hoping to attend the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest for the first time in February 2025, its 35th year. Her busy schedule of teaching and dancing at all kinds of events, from weddings to corporate dinners, keeps her at the physical condition demanded of the competition. LaRance, a seasoned competitor, says that, in the six months prior to the event, she alternates daily between two to three hours of hoop dancing and running six miles. She also has the additional responsibility of making regalia for all the Lightning Boy dancers. This year she made 15 sets of regalia, including that of the winner, Enriquez.

Is it unusual to make your competitor's regalia? I ask her. Hoop dancing "represents the circle of life, and all of the beings within it and it comes with a certain level of respect," she answers. "Even though we're all competing against each other, we're all very supportive. Because that is the way of hoop dancing."

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Europe wants you to travel by train. But why is it so complex and expensive?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241101-why-is-european-train-travel-so-expensive, today

Across the continent, flights are priced at a fraction of the cost of train tickets, hampering the growing number of people who want to travel sustainably. The big question is: why?

When Tess Longfield booked her family holiday this year, sustainable travel was one of her major concerns.

"We wanted to go to Brittany," she said, "and we wanted to travel by train because I felt it was more sustainable. I bought Eurostar tickets easily and was willing to pay extra in comparison to flying. I booked an Airbnb and planned to buy the Paris-to-Brittany train ticket closer to the time. I felt good about the trip."

But it didn't go according to plan. While Longfield bought the Eurostar tickets nine months ahead of the trip, the internal French rail tickets weren't available – typically you can't buy European train tickets more than six months in advance. They sold out immediately on the day they became available, leaving her with no option but to cancel the Eurostar tickets and book a flight instead.

"I'm trying to live a more sustainable life," she said, "And I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed that I ended up flying. I don't mind spending more or it taking more time to arrange – I really wanted to do it by train."

She's not alone. Sustainability communications consultant Jo Geneen is based in Amsterdam and regularly travels across Europe by train to meetings in Hamburg, Paris and London. But she's one of a growing number of consumers feeling frustrated about the difficulties of travelling by train compared to the far-less-sustainable option of flying.

"I recently booked a trip to Hamburg from Amsterdam," Geneen said. "I was forced to cancel it at the last minute, and found the ticket was non-refundable. It's so frustrating: it already cost more." She was left with the choice of rebooking the trip, knowing it was non-refundable and more expensive, or booking a faster, flexible and refundable flight. Sadly, it was an easy choice to make.

"As a consumer, how can we make the right decisions? When you're faced with routes that are four or five times cheaper to fly, it's so hard to do the right thing."

It's a question seemingly at odds with what's happening in Europe's railways. Across the continent, rail travel is booming. Throughout 2024, night train routes across Europe have continued to expand and grow, led by Austria's Nightjet network that now runs routes including Vienna-Venice and Paris-Berlin. Eurail, which runs Interrail, one of the continent's best-known train travel brands, says it has seen the demand for European train travel and flight-free itineraries grow by 25% between 2022 and 2023. 

There's no question that people want to travel by train, despite the higher prices and occasional inconveniences. Some governments are also prioritising it. In France there is a ban on short-haul flights if there is a rail alternative that takes less than 2.5 hours; and in Spain, a similar ban is being considered as part of its 2050 climate action plan.

 

Yet, for all the rise in travel options and bookings, there continues to be a disconnect: people in Europe are finding that significantly higher prices and complicated booking situations thwart their desire to be sustainable.

Justin Francis, CEO of Responsible Travel, the world's largest travel company dedicated to environmentally friendly travel, has been a long-term campaigner on the issue. He can see a few key reasons why train travel is struggling against Europe's budget airline market. 

"Why do we not tax aviation fuel, which is a fossil fuel, therefore artificially making aviation cheaper? We should have a fair taxation system," he said. (Diesel fuel used for trains is currently taxed at differential rates across Europe, depending on the country.)

Another reason, he says, is that we need to join up train routes to make travelling by rail quicker and more efficient across Europe. And travellers should be able to book further ahead than 180 days – not being able to do so means that travel agents and tour operators can’t guarantee routes and plans far enough ahead of time, and can’t offer packages that would otherwise make sense, logistically and financially.

"The final reason is that under the EU package holiday regulations, if a tour operator books a customer on a holiday involving rail and the train is delayed or failed, the tour operator must refund them," he says. "If they book with an airline and the airline is late or delayed or cancelled, the airline refunds them."

What this all means for travellers is that buying a holiday where you travel by train is not likely to be a seamless one. You could be left sitting on a train platform waiting for a connection for longer than you'd like; it will probably be more expensive, and most likely you'll have to book it yourself. In addition, as it’s harder for tour operators and travel agencies to book train travel for their customers, there’s less likelihood of getting a group rate and better prices, too.

These issues have not gone unnoticed at a government level. An EU Action Plan was launched earlier this year aiming to make rail travel more sustainable, efficient and well-connected across the continent. It's a step forward to harmonising rail networks and working towards better solutions, but without addressing the taxation issue, and thereby levelling prices, it's unclear if the EU's commitment to making train travel the top choice will have the desired impact. 

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• A new night train connecting some of Europe's great cities 

So, what can you do if you want to travel by train? Byway is a rare UK travel agent that arranges 100% flight-free travel across Europe. Using its custom JourneyAI programme, it plans and arranges trips, finding the best routes and bypassing the logistical issues of working across different currencies, languages and timetables for its customers in the process. Customers also have a WhatsApp number to call if they get rerouted or delayed during their trip.

"If you exclude time and money from the trip-planning process," said James Hill, one of the company's concierges, "Who wouldn't want to travel by train in Europe?"

Byway says their customers enjoy the very things you can't find when you're travelling by plane: slow travel, a more old-fashioned slant on life, and the restaurant cars, where you can eat in comfort while watching the countryside pass by. "Italy is eternally popular as a destination for us," says Hill. "It's got tiny little regional trains that rattle through vineyards and super modern high-speed trains – some of the best in the world. It's got sleeper trains that drive onto ferries in the middle of the night. It's a perfect place to do rail travel." 

In the FAQs on their website, the company makes it clear that the price issue is one they would like to tackle too, also pointing out that airlines pay no fuel duty and plane tickets are zero-rated for VAT, meaning it’s much easier to offer cheap fares. Instead, they advocate for levies for frequent fliers, flight taxes and a ban on domestic short-haul flights.  

Elswehere, Busbud is also seeking to make it easier to plan a flight-free trip by removing the logistical friction of booking via multiple operators. The firm, likened to an Expedia for ground transportation (bus, coach and train travel), offers a digital way to book point-to-point transport across the US, Canada and Europe without flying. 

"Ground transportation is the last area of travel to be digitised and there's so much to do and it is so, so complex," explained Christine Petersen, Busbud's chief marketing officer. "As travellers, we're looking for better solutions that aren't flying. We talk about the pleasure in the journey and in the experience aspect that isn't just about getting from A to B. You can look out the window, you can get up, you can walk about. You go into the cafe car and have a bite to eat. It's a very different experience."

While the journey might be slower, you don't have to check in two hours before, you avoid long security screening queues, and you arrive in the heart of a city, not an hour away from it. All this means that, for many routes, you're not losing a significant amount of time on the way.

However, from Francis' perspective, significant changes need to take place before train travel comes anywhere near to taking over from air travel. "We need to compete on a level playing field," he said. "I think we've been living on hope by encouraging people that rail travel is the answer. It's time to get real. It isn't the answer, unless we can address the fundamental issues."

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An epic croissant that's the star of a Polish parade

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241108-an-epic-croissant-thats-the-star-of-a-polish-parade, today

The flaky, buttery, layered croissant is irrevocably tied to France, its country of origin. But every 11 November, on the Feast of St Martin, the Renaissance-era city of Poznań in western Poland comes alive with an extravaganza starring a very special horseshoe-shaped pastry; the Rogale swiętomarciński, or St Martin's croissant.

While the rest of the country celebrates Poland's Independence from Prussian, Austrian and Russian occupation, waves of entertainers ranging from stilt-walkers to pom-pom-waving cheerleaders march through Poznań's streets for the St Martin's Day Parade. Around 1.25 million St Martin's croissants are consumed on that day alone – equating to about 250 tonnes of pastry.

This sweet treat's saintly origins go back to the 19th Century when a local priest encouraged his congregation to help the poor in the spirit of St Martin, who famously cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar. A local baker named Józef Melzer is credited with the idea of honouring the pious act by creating a pastry when he prayed to St Martin and dreamed that a white horse entered Poznań and lost its golden shoe. The next day, he made horseshoe-shaped croissants to give to the city's poor, and the tradition quickly spread as more bakers joined in. Over the years, the delicious treat evolved into a regional speciality.

Despite the physical resemblance and the similar name – rogale means croissant in Polish – the St Martin's croissant is distinct from the classic French pastry. Poznań's version is topped with sugar and nuts, and the flaky pastry layers ooze with a thick, luxurious filling made of white poppy seeds, nuts, raisins, almonds, sugar and butter. Each croissant weighs around 250g and comes in at belly-busting 1,200 calories. Sold by weight, the croissants are priced between 15-20 zloty (£2.90-£3.80) per pastry, reflecting the time and effort put into creating this legendary food.

Around three million St Martin's croissants are sold each year in Poznań, and it is taken so seriously in this part of western Poland that in 2008 it the croissant was given Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status by the European Union, joining Gouda cheese from Holland and handcrafted Dresdner Christstollen from Germany, as well as another Polish speciality: the kiełbasa biała parzona, a white sausage from the region of Wielkopolska.

This ruling means that only certified bakeries in Poznań are allowed to produce these croissants under the official name. They must also follow strict guidelines to ensure the quality is upheld and apply annually for certification.

Each baker applying for a certificate must make 24 croissants, which are tested to ensure they follow the exact ingredients and method, which includes folding the dough to create the required 81 layers before the filling can be added. The entire process can take up to six hours, with 35 minutes left between each turn to allow the dough to breathe. This year, just 84 bakeries were given certification by the Chapter of the Traditional Rogal Swietomarcinski.

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Production goes into overdrive in November, with tonnes of ingredients brought in to accommodate the city gobbling up more than a million croissants on parade day.

One of the Poznań's busiest bakers is Hanna Piskorska, who has six shops in the city and her products are so popular she also sells them online across the world. "On 11 November, we are literally besieged with people, which shows the great trust people have in our croissants," said Piskorska.

On St Martin's Day, the entire city stops to celebrate the saint and its beloved croissant. The thunderous procession starts at St Martin's Church (step inside to see a carving of the saint slicing off a swathe of his cape to pass to a cold and hungry beggar) and continues along St Martin's Street, ending after a nine-minute walk to the Imperial Castle, an impressive monument constructed under German rule in 1910.

At the forefront of the procession is St Martin on a white horse, portrayed by an actor in colourful historical costume. Around him are locals in traditional 18th-Century Bamberg dress – first brought to Poznań by German immigrants – with women donning long, flowing colourful clothes and hats made from flowers. People carry baskets of croissants through the crowds lining the streets to make sure no one goes hungry, and there's even a croissant fair where the 84 approved bakers sell their pastries so people can taste them all and pick their favourites.

"Traditionally, at the end of the parade, the Mayor of Poznań ceremonially hands over the keys to the city to St Martin, symbolising his authority for the day," said Weronika Duszak from the Croissant Museum. "The day is a public holiday, meant to be spent with family and friends, rejoicing over shared croissants, music and festivities."

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A journey 400,000 years back in human history

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241105-a-journey-400000-years-back-in-human-history, today

Nestled in Germany's picturesque Neander Valley where Neanderthals were first discovered, a museum is tapping into our growing fascination with our long-lost relatives.

Inside a museum in western Germany, a man in a tailored suit and a dress shirt leaned against a handrail and peered down towards the gallery below. A young girl briefly paused next to him as a few visitors stopped to stare. Something about the scene seemed subtly out of sorts.

The elegantly dressed gentleman had a noticeable ridge on his brow, his nose was large and his chin was recessed.

"We call him Mr Four Percent," said the museum's director, Bärbel Auffermann. Because he was clad in modern clothes, it was easy to overlook the life-like statue's secret: he's a Neanderthal.

The statue conveys an important point – this ancient cave-dwelling hominid is really not much different than us. Indeed, genetic research shows that many humans have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA. In fact, while scientists once believed that Neanderthals, who disappear from the fossil record around 40,000 years ago, were violently displaced by their more slender hominid cousins (us), they now believe humans and Neanderthals interbred for thousands of years until the Neanderthal population eventually disappeared.

Located 15km east of Dusseldorf, the Neanderthal Museum lies just a short walk from the spot where the species was first identified in Germany's Neander Valley in the 1850s. Using startlingly realistic models, Ice Age artefacts and easy-to-follow exhibits, the museum takes visitors on a four-million-year journey to discover humankind's distant origins. A visit isn't just an homage to paleoanthropology, it's more like a trip to see our long-lost cousins.

Since the pandemic, interest in the museum has surged. In 2023, 180,000 Neanderthal fans flocked to the museum – its highest number since the initial rush of visitors following its opening in 1996 – and according to Auffermann, the museum is on pace to hit that number again this year. Meanwhile, an accelerating stream of scientific discoveries and the increasing popularity of at-home DNA testing continues to spark curiosity in our fellow sapiens.

But despite our close relations, Neanderthals have a serious PR problem. Auffermann said most people consider this extinct group of ancient humans were little more than ignorant cavemen – grunting brutes with a club. "From the very beginning we understood it as our mission to rectify this image. We always understood ourselves as being their lawyers, their representatives," she said.

In the last two years, the museum has opened a Stone Age-themed playground with a crawl-through cave and giant spear-shaped timbers supporting a slide and swings. It has also unveiled a soaring 22m "cave view" observation tower and exhibit, topped with a massive Neanderthal skull, which was nominated for a European Museum of the Year award in 2024.

All this comes as perceptions about neanderthals are shifting. Some 400,000 years after they first appeared and 40,000 years after they went extinct, a surge of new documentaries, books and studies about the species have been published in the past 12 months.

In addition to its other new offerings, on 23 November, the museum will open a temporary exhibit focusing on the role women played in Neanderthal society. Author Rebecca Wragg Sykes, whose 2020 international best-selling book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art narrates the accompanying audio tour. Drawing on research, Sykes takes visitors through the lives of four ancient women as they give birth, raise children, hunt and care for their families.

Sykes, who also leads a 10-day holiday tour to Neanderthal sites across Europe, traces our current fascination with the species to the 2010 sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, which revealed that the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans are 99.7% identical.

"It changed the Neanderthal from something that once existed and vanished to something that's still present now," she told the BBC. "People found it an emotional thing. They said: 'I feel connected to part of my past in a way that's unexpected and really moving.'"

Research has continued to broaden our understanding of the species. We now know they were quite sophisticated, making rope, painting caves and caring for the injured and disabled, including – as one recent finding suggests – a child with Down syndrome.

"Neanderthals are individuals. They [were] hunting the same things [as us]… they have hearths at the centre of their social life, just like us," Sykes said.

Humans' first glimpse of our distant ancestors took place just 400m from the museum, which is located in the woods where the Düssel River once flowed through a towering limestone canyon. Even now, this quiet, pastoral pocket of industrial western Germany seems an unlikely site to have changed our understanding of human evolution.

Like England's Lake District and New York's Hudson Valley, the Neander Valley attracted Romantic painters during the early 1800s who were drawn by its untamed, picturesque landscape. After sketching the scenery, they'd retreat to caves and rock shelters for picnics and parties. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the mid-1800s, limestone became a valuable commodity for iron makers, and stoneworkers were brought in from Italy to quarry the cliffs.

In August 1856, labourers began digging out the clay floor of a cave and discovered16 fossilised bones from a single individual. A local teacher and naturalist named Johann Carl Fuhlrott was called in, and immediately sensed the find was noteworthy. The remains suggested a stocky, powerful body, unlike a typical human. Fuhlrott and a colleague named the species after the valley where it was found: Homo neanderthalensis.

While Neanderthals are certainly the prime attraction, the museum takes visitors on a journey through the greatest hits of human evolution. Life-size figures are arranged in a timeline, including Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), our ape-like ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago and is often considered "The Mother of Man". She poses alongside Homo erectus (our relative from 1.6 million years ago) and Homo sapiens, our modern species who first appeared 300,000 years ago.

But the star is "Mr N", a life-like statue of an impish, naked Neanderthal. With a thick beard ringing his jaw and stylish long hair, he reminded me of a prehistoric hipster. As I approached the exhibit, I was blocked by a small crowd of visitors gathering to take photos of the figure, who seemed to gaze back with a sly grin.

Today, Mr N serves as the museum's de facto mascot, and has been so popular that he had to be replaced after his predecessor's skin was worn down when too many visitors couldn't resist the chance to touch the past.

"He's some sort of identification figure," said Auffermann. "People of the region, they like him a lot."

Outside the museum, the steep gorges that once lured painters have been removed, quarry shovel by quarry shovel. Only one towering plinth remains, where a large metal tablet with gothic lettering commemorates the original Neanderthal discovery. Nearby, a path leads past the rock to the new observation tower at the edge of a forest.

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The wheelchair-accessible structure carries visitors up a circular walkway, interrupted by interpretive panels with recorded narration. The climb culminates at a viewing platform, where telescopes reveal a virtual-reality landscape populated with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and Neanderthals. The tower's peak stands at roughly the same spot and elevation as the cave floor where we first came face to face with our distant relatives.

"It's a bit like visiting the grave of your ancestor," Skyes said. "It's kind of crazy – this giant tower with a skull at top. It's a way to allow people to be as close as possible to the space where that actual cave was. I think it's rather wonderful."

As each new finding deepens our understanding of our world – and ourselves – Skyes said she expects interest in Neanderthals to continue to grow.

"Neanderthals are interesting for their own sake, not because of their relevance to us," she said. "Even if we had never interbred with them, it's still interesting as another experiment of what it is to be a human."

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The changing face of Mongolia

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241101-the-changing-face-of-mongolia, today

It's home to vast, open steppes and an ancient nomadic culture, but as the nation rapidly urbanises, can the landlocked nation hold onto its roots?

With its thrilling horse races, ancient nomadic culture and a pulsating modern capital, Mongolia is increasingly luring adventurous travellers eager to experience its famed hospitality and vast, sweeping grasslands. In a recent episode of BBC's The Travel Show, host Lucy Hedges visited the country and got a taste of both the vibrant city life of Ulaanbaatar and the more traditional rhythms of the steppe.

Dominated by the soaring Altai Mountains to the west and the harsh Gobi Desert to the south, the world's second-largest landlocked nation is home to a varied tapestry of traditions shaped by its tangled history.

 After Russian forces helped Mongolian revolutionaries drive out the occupying Chinese, the Mongolia declared its independence in 1924 and chose Ulaanbaatar (whose name means "Red Hero") as the capital of the newly formed communist nation. In the 1990s Mongolia transitioned to a democracy, and in the past  24 years, Ulaanbaatar's population has tripled to 1.7 million people. However, despite this rapid urbanisation and growth, the country is still best known for the nomadic lifestyles of the Indigenous communities who have called the area home for millennia.

Since at least the 3rd Century CE, residents of the Mongolian steppe have survived by herding livestock and living off the land. Even today, roughly 40% of Mongolians are nomadic. Around one-third of the country's population still lives in traditional dwellings called gers (yurts), which can be quickly deconstructed and moved to a new location – a process that happens around two to four times per year.  Now however, a combination of urbanisation and extreme weather caused by the changing climate are threatening this ancient lifestyle.

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"We had never seen so much snow," a traditional herder named Manlai told The Travel Show. "It was hard for the livestock to get to pasture. From the end of January [on] they began to die. We are running out of money and there's no other way to make a living."

Yet, despite Ulaanbaatar's rapid growth and shifting weather patterns, many are still determined to carry on the traditions of their ancestors. And in the last few years, Mongolia has seen an increase in tourism, as many people are eager to experience this ancient culture – as well as the nation's snowcapped mountains, vast sand dunes and seemingly endless grasslands.

Travellers can witness traditional horse racing at events like the 10-day Mongol Derby (4-13 August 2025); learn to make traditional crafts like carvings from wood or antler with local families, and hear the once-banned artform of throat singing by catching a performance of the Tumen-Ekh Folk Song and Dance Ensemble. At the Altai Eagle Festival (held in mid-September every year), traditional eagle hunters showcase the prowess of their winged companions, while the Naadam Festival (held each July) is a Unesco-inscribed showcase of traditional Mongolian wrestling, archery and horseracing.

A number of national parks are located within easy reach of the capital, including Khustain National Park, home to endangered Przewalski's horses, and the striking rock formations of the Gurvan Saikhan National Park. Mountain climbing tours are available of the Altai Mountains, and trekking – either on camelback through the desert or on horseback across the plains – are just some of the popular outdoor activities available.

For those of a less outdoorsy bent, Ulaanbaatar is home to many beautiful temples and monasteries, such as Choijin Lama Temple Museum and the Gandan Khiid Monastery. Popular museums like Bogd Khaan Winter Palace Museum – the former imperial residence of the 8th Bogd Khan, or ruler of Mongolia – and the National Museum of Mongolia preservee a treasure trove of artefacts detailing Mongolian history and traditional life.

Visitors can also get a taste of how Mongolians' traditional lifestyles are changing, by visiting the so-called "Ger District" on the outskirts of the capital. The area is home to around 900,000 formerly nomadic people – many of whom are living in urban environments for the first time. GerHub, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to addressing social, political and infrastructural problems faced by the area's residents, is also helping families find new ways of supporting themselves through community tours and by selling traditional crafts to tourists.

"There's a lot of misconception that Ger area residents want to go live in an apartment building," explains Daria Azbayar, GerHub's social innovation lead. "But for some former nomads, it feels so constricted … being surrounded by four walls. So, we wanted to offer that perspective for tourists."

But whether she was in the city or the steppe, what Hedges found most enchanting about the nation was the warmth of its people.

"Coming from the bustling metropolis of London, I wasn't sure how I'd cope with the isolation," said Hedges of her time living with traditional nomadic Mongolians. "But I've been surprised by how big a welcome I've received. In many ways out here in one of the sparsestplaces on Earth, this is a less lonely place than the big city."

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The curious appeal of haunted hotels

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241030-the-curious-appeal-of-haunted-hotels, today

Every year around Halloween, countless hotels around the world tout their allegedly haunted status to guests – so why are both sceptics and believers booking them?

Comedienne and writer Joanna Hausmann did not believe in ghosts. She was an extreme sceptic who thought that there was a logical explanation for any supposedly supernatural phenomenon – that is, until she spent the night in the Biltmore Hotel, purportedly one of the most haunted places in Miami.

After a terrifying night, which she said included voices in the adjoining room of her suite and multiple televisions and a hair dryer that randomly turned on, her outlook on the supernatural shifted. Ever since, she pores through online forums to make sure guests have never experienced an otherworldly encounter before staying at any hotel.

"Ghosts and hauntings and that kind of thing – I did not believe in any of that," Hausmann insisted. "I'm not even joking [that this experience] literally altered my life. I felt like there was someone in there. I don't know what it was, but it did change me forever."

Every year around Halloween, countless hotels and attractions around the world, like the Hotel del Coranado in California or The Clermont in London, tout their allegedly haunted status to visitors looking for a spine-tingling way to spend the holiday. However, for people like Hausmann who have had a spooky encounter, the question of why anyone would want to experience a similarly frightening episode by staying at a haunted hotel is baffling.

The Historic Hotels of America lists dozens of haunted hotels within its ranks. According to Katherine Orr, the group's director of marketing strategy and communications, these properties attract a wide range of visitors. "I would say there's a couple different kinds of guests at the haunted hotel. One would be a thrill-seeker, someone who gets excited about the idea of ghosts, maybe wants to have that kind of experience," she said. "Then I think there's another kind of guest that's more interested in the storytelling aspect of it. Because the lore, the ghost story, they're really part of what make these hotels unique."

According to Orr, exactly how a hotel manages its reputation for being haunted is very much a marketing decision. "Hotels have to find a good balance in telling those stories and finding the niche where they can reach the right audience," she said. "Then also toning down those stories when they think that their target audience wouldn't be interested."

Some establishments, like the Lord Baltimore Hotel in Maryland, embrace their haunted notoriety year round – they even employ Vince Wilson as an on-staff ghost hunter and entertainer. According to Wilson, guests have reported seeing the child ghost known as "Molly" playing with a ball in the hallways of the hotel, a lift that randomly takes itself to the 19th floor and a ghostly couple dancing silently in the ballroom. Wilson also hosts regular ghost tours that explore the hotel's spooky history, noting that the popularity (and the cost) of these tours goes up as Halloween approaches each year.

On the other hand, hotels like the Hassayampa Inn in Prescott, Arizona, keep their hauntings mostly under wraps. Though Penny Alpin, director of sales and marketing at the inn, describes the hotel's resident ghost as "very friendly" (she apparently likes to cuddle up with male guests and borrow the compact mirrors of female guests), these experiences are not something that she generally advertises outside of spooky season.  

"[Halloween is] the only time I promote it," said Alpin. "A haunting is not one of the things I want to promote… why would you want to scare people?"

Lee Johnson-Lowe, director of sales and marketing at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, thinks most guests of the property are either sceptics or thrill-seekers. "[There are] two kinds of people that generally go to a haunted hotel or [haunted] venue of any type," he said "[Those who say], 'I don't believe in ghosts, I need a place to stay, and this place is a luxury hotel', and people that are like 'This place is haunted? I am definitely staying there now!'"

Interestingly, even the hotel's resident ghost hunter is unsure whether ghosts are real. "I've been to some of the most haunted places in the world," said Wilson. "And I've certainly had weird, spooky, even scary experiences, but I can also look back and say, 'you know what, that could have been my imagination'."

Whether apparitions appear or not, travellers continue to seek out haunted hotels each autumn, with Johnson-Lowe noting that bookings for the Lord Baltimore spike every year as Halloween nears.

"What I always tell people who are nervous about certain locations, who do not want to have anything to do with hauntings, my opinion on that is that there's no way to avoid it so you might as well embrace it."

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Is Ireland's County Meath the true birthplace of Halloween?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241030-meath-county-the-birthplace-of-halloween-in-ireland, today

Think Halloween, and most of us associate it with the hedonistic, multi-billion-dollar event that is seen in the US. Yet, its true origins actually lie in Celtic culture.

I didn't expect her to be holding a decapitated head when she arrived. But there she was, standing in the foyer of the Trim Castle Hotel in County Meath, clutching the angry-looking face of a man called Áillen under her arm. It was a suitably macabre introduction for the organiser of the Púca Halloween Festival here in Ireland.

"Sorry," said Claire Morrissey, "I've been busy painting him all afternoon – I'm just on my way to the workshop."

It wasn't a human head, of course, rather a papier mâché sculpture of a figure from Celtic folklore who, legend has it, would attend gatherings on 31 October and, using his melodic tiompán (a type of Irish harp), would lull everyone to sleep before setting the whole place on fire. This year at the festival (from 31 October to 3 November 2024), he will form part of a huge procession to the 12th-Century castle in the town of Trim, which, Morrissey tells me, will end in a pyrotechnic fire display for which everyone will be decidedly awake.

Think Halloween, and most of us associate it with the hedonistic, multi-billion-dollar event that is seen in the US ($12.2bn was collectively spent on it last year). Yet, its true origins actually lie in Celtic culture.

"It's much older than people think," said Dr Kelly Fitzgerald, head of the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at University College Dublin. "It can be traced back thousands of years to a cross-quarter day in the Celtic calendar that is halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice – known as Samhain. It was a huge celebration, so when Irish people emigrated to North America, they took their traditions with them, and over time they evolved into the Halloween we celebrate today."

Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced Sow-in, literally meaning "the end of summer"), was, and still is, huge in Ireland, with processions and festivals held across the entire island, from Derry to Waterford – including, since 2019, County Meath. This is when locals decided to cement their historic link to Samhain's origins, and called their event Púca, after the shape-shifting mischievous spirit in Irish folklore.

"It's different from Halloween in that we're celebrating a traditional origin story," said Púca organiser Morrissey. The four-day festival will include a parade, several music concerts, ghost tours and costume-making workshops – utilising fallen leaves and twigs rather than single-use plastic. And turnip-carving sessions will take the place of pumpkin carving, as this was the vegetable that Jack-o'-lanterns were originally made from to scare away spirits before the tradition reached North America and locals found pumpkins much easier to carve.

It sounded fun, but I was curious – what makes County Meath able to claim Samhain as its own?

"There's a mound called the Hill of Ward above the town of Athboy where remains of large, ancient ceremonial fires were discovered in 2014, thought to be from around 500 CE," explained Morrissey, "strongly suggesting that thousands of years ago the community would gather there on Samhain to celebrate the end of the harvest with a bonfire, marking the coming of the dark season. And afterwards, they would carry burning torches down to their homes to light their own fires to see them through the winter."

That excavation 10 years ago was the first to point towards a Samhain connection beyond folkloric accounts. According to Dr Steve David, the head archaeologist leading the dig, "There are very few monuments in Ireland that we consider comparable to this." He explained that not only is the mound a massive ceremonial enclosure, but its location right in the heart of a major monumental landscape is striking, with nearly 360-degree views around it. "We have found evidence of intense burning there," he added. "So, this monument is associated with fire and the medieval texts would associate this very strongly with an annual fire festival."

Whether or not that festival was the very first Samhain celebration is impossible to prove, but there are other links that support County Meath's claim as the birthplace of the celebration. For example, the original name of the hill is Tlachtga, which is the name of a Celtic sun goddess – and where the sun is mentioned, fire is implied. There are also medieval texts from 17th-Century writers specifically saying that on Halloween all other fires were extinguished to be relit from the one on Tlachtga's summit.

Eager to see the potential birthplace of Halloween myself – and learn more about the person for whom it was named, I headed to the hill, which is just 10 minutes north of Trim. As I walked to the summit I was serenaded by robins and song thrushes hidden amid the ombre blush of red, orange and yellow leaves. My boots crunched on fallen conkers from horse chestnut trees. Seeing nature visually mark the change between summer and winter, with leaves dying and dark nights drawing in, the Samhain celebrations seemed to make perfect sense. Fitzgerald agrees that the Celts took their cues from the natural world.

"Samhain was written about in the earliest literature to come out of Ireland," she explained. "We have the Otherworld, the world of the dead, and we have the natural world, the world of the living. And at this time when things are dying and the sun is fading, the veil between the two was said to be at its thinnest so mischievous spirits could come into our world."

To protect oneself from these spirits, the practise of dressing up caught on as a disguise to keep the wearer safe, lest they be dragged into the Otherworld. Someone who takes this practice very seriously is the person I was about to meet on the hilltop: Fiona Dalton or, as she introduced herself that day, Tlachtga herself (pronounced Clock-da). She was dressed in a green and brown flowing dress, clasping a staff made from hazel and sporting a headdress of autumnal leaves and berries. She explained how she was the powerful druid and daughter of a sun god, who, legend has it, died giving birth to triplets right here on this summit. If the hill is the birthplace of Halloween, then she is – arguably – its mother.

"You may know this as the Hill of Ward but that is only since the 17th Century. Its real name is Tlachtga, named after me, and my people celebrated here every year on Samhain," she bellowed, as I made my way over the grass-covered late Bronze Age earthworks that line its plateau. She then led me into town to the Fair Green – a community green space featuring a wood carving of Tlachtga, as well as a throne hewn from a felled tree and a circle of oak and horse chestnut trees that formed a so-called fairy fort.

This was a living history tour – the brainchild of Dalton and her partner Gerry Meade – that recounts tales from Celtic mythology to explain how they intersect with modern day Halloween in Athboy and County Meath. We ended, as all great tours do, in a pub for some lunch.

Amid the visually arresting parades and fire festivals, another important element of Samhain is the food – and I'm not talking about candies and chocolate. This time of year marked the end of the harvest and a time for feasting on the bounty of crops produced. Nowadays it sees a proliferation of barmbrack – a kind of fruited loaf – in Irish shops, as well as menus featuring colcannon (mashed potato with cabbage and a big knob of butter).

"Halloween is often called 'cally night' or 'colcannon night'," explained Regina Spector, food and culinary historian at University College Cork, whom I met later that day to ask about the importance of food. "It was a key part of Samhain feasting – being warming and a real treat because of all the butter. But at this time of year, food has a different function outside of feasting – to connect communities together through games and activities."

Apples, she explained, were traditionally peeled so the skin could be thrown to reveal the initial of a future suitor, or bobbed in water for in a matchmaking ritual. The barmbrack is an easy-to-make bread made special by seasonal fruit and nuts, with symbolic items – a ring for marriage, a cloth for poverty, a thimble for spinsterhood or a matchstick for an argument – folded in by the baker. A practise that, due to health and safety, is not nearly as widespread today.

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Filled up with comfort food (minus the foretelling of my future), I continued on my hunt for links to Halloween in County Meath among its ancient and mystical sites. At the imposing Trim Castle and the crumbling ruins of St Mary's bell tower on the opposite banks of the River Boyne, I undertook a ghost tour with local Cynthia Simonet, who regaled me with modern stories of an alleyway haunted by a monk, and Celtic legends of the Cú Sidhe – a black dog that can go from this world to the Otherworld. Almost in a whisper, she told me how "about 20 odd years ago, rumours started to circulate that there [were] white witches out in Athboy holding ceremonies at Halloween on the summit of Tlachtga", thus cementing a strong belief of its claim to the origins of Samhain.

Next was an exploration of the county's myriad Neolithic sites, including Newgrange (a 5,000-year-old passage tomb) and Knowth (an ancient burial ground with the largest collection of engraved megalithic art in the world). On the surface, both have no link to Halloween's origins as they predate the Celtic beliefs. Yet the former is said to be the gateway to the Otherworld, and the latter has a series of standing stones; and one of these, my guide informed me, casts a shadow that points towards the tomb's inner sanctum – at sunrise after Samhain evening on 31 October.

Finally I journeyed to the Hill of Tara (known famously as the seat of the High Kings of Ireland), whose Stone Age "Mound of Hostages" also has a passageway that, every year, is illuminated by the rising sun at… Samhain.

I left with multiple yarns of history and folklore spinning in my head, and attempted to weave them all together. Some historians and archaeologists point out that the links between Samhain and the area are difficult to prove conclusively, but there are certainly a lot of handy coincidences. And the one thing that does tie Samhain, Halloween and now Púca together here in County Meath, I realised, is their ability to bring people and communities together. Perhaps that's something we can all embrace as the nights darken, the leaves fall and we all try not to lose our heads.

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Five of the most haunted places in Britain

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20241029-five-of-the-most-haunted-places-in-britain, today

Every country has its ghost stories, its mythical monsters and its ghoulish urban legends. But the United Kingdom – the home of the Gothic novel and the birthplace of paranormal investigation – may stake a claim to being the most haunted country on Earth.

With one of the world's highest concentrations of castles and no shortage of centuries-old pubs and coaching inns, there are plenty of reputedly haunted places to enjoy a drink or a meal, or even lay your head for the night – if you're feeling brave.

In addition, the country's relatively small size means it's possible to combine several of these places into one ghost-heavy itinerary. Here's where travellers with a penchant for the paranormal should head to get spooked this Halloween.

1. Skirrid Inn, Abergavenny, Wales

With a history going back 900 years, the Skirrid Inn in the eastern fringes of Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park is the oldest pub in Wales. If you believe the locals, it's also the most haunted. The building's ghostly associations go back to its former life as a courthouse and jail, which saw hundreds of prisoners executed by hanging from a wooden beam that still sits behind the bar.

Reports over the centuries tell of glasses flying across the bar, creepy laughter echoing from the upstairs rooms and sudden drops in temperature. Ghost hunt evenings are held here several times a month, and you can also stay in one of the guestrooms, which are as cosy and traditional as the pub downstairs, with its stone hearths, log fires and hearty home-cooked food. It's also a lovely base for walks in nearby Coed y Cerrig, a wooded glacial valley tucked away in the Black Mountains.

2. Chillingham Castle, Northumberland

In the remote reaches of rural Northumberland – one of England's most beautiful yet under-appreciated corners – lies Chillingham, reputedly the country's most haunted historic castle. Beginning life as a monastery in the 12th Century, Chillingham frequently came under attack by raiders from Scotland, whose border is barely 15 miles from here. The monastery was fortified into a castle in 1344 as it was strategically important for the English armies heading north – King Edward I, for example, stayed here in 1298 while en route to fight Sir William "Braveheart" Wallace.

Throughout the medieval period, Chillingham harboured many prisoners, the most unfortunate of whom came under the dubious care of John Sage, a torturer with the well-earned sobriquet "Butcher of the Scots". Today, replicas of Sage's fearsome torture devices – spiked chairs, twisting racks, iron maidens and the like – are on display in the castle's dungeon. Evening ghost tours of the castle, meanwhile, tell of some of the wandering spirits said to roam its corridors, including the "Blue Boy", a glowing apparition of a child said to haunt one of the corridors; another often reported is a ghostly lady said to stalk one of the courtyards at night, begging passersby for water.

For the full Chillingham experience, though, stay overnight in one of the castle's historic guestrooms: modern self-catering apartments housed in the former dairy, guard quarters and lookout tower, among other sections of the building. Be sure to explore the grounds, too: a snow-white herd of rare, primeval cattle, unchanged since medieval times, complement the ghostly aesthetic.

3. Whitby, North Yorkshire

Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was Irish, not British – but it was the English coastal town of Whitby that inspired him to write his seminal novel, which went on to underpin the modern vampire myth. It's hard to imagine a more strikingly located building than the 7th-Century Whitby Abbey, the remains of which stand, skeletal and ragged, atop a windblown cliff. The ghost of the monastery's founder, Saint Hilda, is said to stalk the ruins, along with that of Constance de Beverley, a nun who broke her vow of chastity and was bricked up in the abbey walls.

The beach below the abbey is the spot where Stoker chose to introduce Count Dracula, who comes ashore here in the form of a beastly dog, padding up the 199 steps to St Mary’s Church, which still stands next to the abbey ruins.

Horror fans may wish to make Whitby the endpoint of a walk across the nearby North York Moors, a desolately beautiful national park of heather-carpeted upland that was the setting for another creepy classic: An American Werewolf in London. The opening scene of the cult comedy-horror sees two backpackers lose their way across the moors, meeting strange locals and even stranger beasts beneath the light of a full moon.

Ideally, time your visit to coincide with the Whitby Goth Weekend, a celebration of goth culture held twice a year, in late April and early November.

4. Ancient Ram Inn, Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire's sleepy market town of Wotton-under-Edge is home to what some say is Britain's most haunted pub, the Ancient Ram Inn. As befits its name, the inn is extremely old, dating from 1492, and it looks it, too: a low, squat, ivy-strewn half-timbered Tudor building that age has warped and bent, giving the eerie impression that you're looking at it from inside a hall of mirrors.

The otherworldly atmosphere only ramps up once you're inside. At first glance it looks like any other atmospheric old country pub, with rough-hewn stone walls, ornamental horse brasses, roaring fireplaces and wooden beams. But look closer and you'll see strange artefacts: a ram's head affixed to a wall, a mummified cat in a glass case, and, by the dart board, a grill across the stone floor marking the spot where the bodies of a woman and two children were found – victims, so the story goes, of a human sacrifice.

More like this:

• Five of the scariest places on Earth

• The Skirvin: The US' most haunted hotel?

• The Paulding Light: A US mystery you can see but not touch

Ghostly monks and Civil War soldiers, strange orbs of light and flitting shadows are among the odd phenomena that have been reported here for centuries. You can come to your own conclusions after an overnight ghost tour, led by expert guides armed with Ouija boards, ghost-hunting instruments and all manner of spooky stories.

5. Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

Not all of Britain's haunted locations are found in sleepy villages and rural inns. London has a huge concentration of ghost stories, but so too does Scotland's capital, Edinburgh – with the most haunted spot in the city said to be its most famous building, Edinburgh Castle. Looming above the city from its seat on Castle Rock, a vast volcanic hill, Edinburgh Castle has existed in some form for almost 1,000 years, and it's accumulated plenty of myths and legends in that time.

Like many British castles and stately homes, the ghost of a Grey Lady has often been spotted here – in this instance, the spirit of Janet Douglas who was burned at the stake outside the castle in 1537. Other ghosts bear echoes of the Anglo-Scottish Civil War: one spirit sometimes reported is that of a headless drummer, who struck up a march in 1650 to warn of the oncoming threat of Oliver Cromwell, and is sometimes still spotted today drumming on the castle's battlements.

A ghostly black dog has also been seen roaming the castle. Most bizarre, though, is the spectre of a former prisoner who attempted to escape by hiding in a wheelbarrow full of manure – which was then tipped from a great height from the castle's battlements, sending him to an untimely death. This hapless prisoner is not just one of Britain’s more eccentric ghosts; he may be the only one who you smell before you see.

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Atmospheric Rivers: Inside the giant 'sky rivers' swelling with climate change

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240509-how-to-forecast-the-next-atmospheric-river-storms, today

Atmospheric river storms have wreaked havoc on the West Coast, and are getting bigger. These scientists chase them in the sky to predict where they will strike.

In January 2024, Anna Wilson was sitting aboard a Gulfstream IV jet, observing a deceptively calm-looking sea of white clouds over the northern Pacific Ocean. Through her headphones, Wilson – an atmospheric scientist and extreme weather expert – could hear her colleague give a countdown. At the back of the plane, another colleague dropped slim, cylindrical instruments through a chute, into the brewing storm below them, to measure its strength as it approached the US West Coast.

The type of storm they were tracking is known as an atmospheric river – a weather phenomenon that has been attracting more and more attention in recent years, as scientists and the public race to understand its sometimes devastating impact. Research suggests that atmospheric rivers are getting bigger, more frequent and more extreme, due to climate change; and the damage they cause is getting worse.

Often described as rivers in the sky, atmospheric rivers are a huge, invisible ribbons of water vapour. Each can be several hundreds of kilometres wide, and transport 27 times as much water as the Mississippi River. They are born in warm oceans, as seawater evaporates, rises and moves to cooler latitudes. When the vapour reaches a coast, such as California, it flows up a mountain, cools, and comes down as rain or snow – enough to wash down hillsides causing landslides, and bring torrential rain, floods and deadly avalanches.

On the US West Coast, atmospheric rivers bring the heaviest rains, warmest storms, major floods, extreme coastal winds, and landslides. They can come in groups – known as "families" – with several of them striking a place within days. The brewing family of storms Wilson and her colleague were flying over was in fact formed by four atmospheric rivers, which later caused heavy snowfall in California and floods in Oregon in January 2024.

The basic questions remain the same for each atmospheric river, says Wilson, a field research manager at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. "Where is it going to make landfall? How strong will it be? How long will it last? And we continue to get better at [answering] that," she says.

The flight Wilson was on in January was part of Atmospheric River Reconnaissance, or AR Recon, a joint project with the US Air Force, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and other partners. Using "hurricane hunter" aircraft normally deployed for observing hurricanes – the NOAA Gulfstream jet, as well as two or more Air Force aircraft – teams of scientists fly over atmospheric rivers, and drop instruments called dropsondes into them.

"Atmospheric rivers are interesting and cool but you can't see them, actually, because it's water vapour," Wilson says. "And they're really close to the surface, they are usually focused on the lowest few kilometres of the atmosphere."

Wilson points out that they tend to travel under cloud cover, which hides them from conventional weather observation tools like satellites. "It's really hard for the satellites to sort of see through that, to what's going on at the near-surface. So the point of flying the aircraft through them is to be able to drop our sensors, and get these foundational meteorological measurements – temperature, air pressure, wind and moisture," she says.

The atmospheric rivers Wilson and her team were monitoring in January were part of a series of 51 atmospheric rivers that hit Washington, Oregon and California between autumn 2023 and spring 2024, 13 more than the previous season. Knowing when and where such a storm will arrive, and how powerful it is, helps people on land prepare for what's coming, and for example, empty the right reservoirs in time. But Wilson and her colleagues' flights, which started in 2016, are also part of a wider scientific effort to better understand atmospheric rivers – including their surprising benefits.

As extreme weather specialists are quick to point out, atmospheric rivers are not necessarily destructive. On the contrary, they can be life-sustaining.

"We need [atmospheric rivers] – without them in the West we have droughts," Wilson says. Up to two-thirds of the West Coast's droughts are brought to an end by the arrival of an atmospheric river – they are known as drought busters.

"There is a beneficial side of atmospheric rivers," agrees Bin Guan, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We tend to highlight the hazardous side but we have to remember that they provide important water supply in dry regions, such as California." Overall, they contribute up to 50% of California's rain and snow.

On the west coast of the US and Canada, atmospheric rivers have been known as the "Pineapple Express" due to their presumed origins near Hawaii. However, Guan says that name is rarely used amongst experts, since atmospheric rivers are a global phenomenon, and many of the ones hitting the West Coast in fact originate much further away than Hawaii. In October 2017, an unusually long atmospheric river extended roughly 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometres) from Japan to Washington.

In 2019, researchers created a scale to rank atmospheric rivers from one (weak, producing modest rainfall) to five (exceptional, primarily hazardous) to give a more nuanced picture of them.

"The mild ones are considered beneficial for the water supply, only the very extreme ones are hazardous," says Qian Cao, a hydrologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "So it has both good sides and downsides, it doesn't only lead to bad events here."

Predicting atmospheric rivers is key to limiting their destructive side, but is difficult, Cao says. For a start, they develop over the ocean, where there are fewer ways of observing them than on land. They then travel thousands of kilometres, and during that journey, can stall, intensify, weaken, get warmer or cooler, and interact with other atmospheric rivers, or remnants of them. Any of these changes will affect their impact, she says.

Strategies such as forecast-informed reservoir operations, which use weather and water forecasting to help water managers decide whether to empty their reservoirs in expectation of massive rainfall, can help cope with them, she says.

"If we can forecast or predict these atmospheric rivers better, if we can predict them more accurately, with longer lead times, then we have more time to make operational decisions, for example, whether we want to release water or save water in the reservoirs," says Cao. Forecasts are most accurate in the short term, for lead times of three to five days, she says, and their accuracy decreases with longer lead times. "Researchers are working very hard to improve forecasts beyond week two," she adds, since having a month or more to prepare would give people on the ground more options.

This is where the AR Recon flights come in, looking inside the sky rivers, where other instruments can't reach.

For Wilson's team, each flight begins with a forecast meeting in the morning, discussing existing forecasts of rain and snow in the US in the coming days. They identify areas of uncertainty that could be improved through more data on the atmospheric river that is bringing the expected rain or snow. They then fly to that atmospheric river, and collect the required data with the dropsondes.

"The purpose of these targeted reconnaissance flights is to fill gaps, when we know the satellites have a difficult time seeing," Wilson says.

Each Gulfstream flight lasts around eight hours – and as Wilson says, one vital bit of practical preparation is to bring your own food. The instruments transmit the data to the team aboard the aircraft, who check it and transmit it to the Global Telecommunications System, a World Meteorological Organization service that collects and distributes global weather-related data. It is then picked up by forecasting models, which use the data together with hundreds of millions of other observations, including from satellites. The now more accurate forecasts, enhanced by the dropsonde data, are shared with reservoir operators and emergency responders.

Studies suggest that the dropsonde data indeed helps improve forecasts, with a recent analysis recommending that future missions involve daily flights and both the Gulfstream jet and Air Force aircraft, to gather as much data as possible. The team are also using other technologies to collect information, as well as working on modelling systems, to further improve forecasts and deepen their understanding of individual storms.

This race to understand atmospheric rivers is especially urgent, researchers say, as studies suggest they are changing, and becoming more frequent – and potentially, becoming more devastating.

Mengqian Lu is an associate professor in hydrometeorology and water resources at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She and her team published a global study in January 2024 projecting their future intensity, frequency and associated rainfall and snowfall around the world. According to their projections, the global frequency of atmospheric rivers could almost double by the end of this century. But what exactly that means on the ground varies from region to region, the study suggests.

"In general, the more frequent and stronger [the atmospheric river], the more frequent and stronger rainfall it brings – but the translation is not one-to-one because the climate system is non-linear, rather chaotic," Lu says.

What seems likely is that as the atmosphere warms with climate change, it will be able to hold increasing levels of moisture. "As a result we expect to see more frequent and stronger atmospheric rivers," she says.

Because of their role in transporting heat as well as moisture, knowing how atmospheric rivers will change as climate continues to warm up is essential for understanding the broader impact of global warming, Lu says. For instance, atmospheric rivers bringing warmth have triggered the melting of ice shelves in West Antarctica.

A growing body of research highlights their impact around the world. In East Asia, they contribute up to 90% of extreme rainfall in the warm seasons, and have caused floods and landslides. They can affect multiple locations, with several places experiencing disastrous weather at the same time, or in close succession, as atmospheric rivers might bring snow and blizzards to one region, and rain and severe floods to another.

They can also form vicious cycles with other disasters, such as wildfires, causing mudslides in areas scarred by fire where the lack of vegetation makes the soil less absorbant and vulnerable to erosion. They can also drive fast plant growth that turns into fuel for the next fire, leading to an increase in the burned areas the following season, research suggests.

Back-to-back atmospheric rivers – one after the other, bringing seemingly endless rain – are also becoming more common, studies suggest. From late December 2022 to mid-January 2023, nine atmospheric rivers hit California in a row, resulting in floods, landslides and power outages. As the authors of one study point out, such clusters can mean the drenched soil cannot dry out in between the storms, making flooding more likely. (Read more about how climate change could bring megafloods to California.)

"In the western US, atmospheric rivers account for nearly 90% of the flood damages, totalling more than $1bn (£80m) a year. This number could double or even triple by the end of this century based on climate model projections of changes in atmospheric rivers," Guan says.

Nor do they always carry water vapour alone. In 2021, they drove Saharan dust from Africa to Europe, darkening the snow in the Alps, reducing its reflectiveness, bringing heat, and reducing snow depth by 50%.

More like this:

Given this global scale and complexity, how can we cope with atmospheric rivers?

Cao says we need to recognise how climate change is altering them, and adopt more sustainable development measures to fight global warming. Early warning systems, public awareness and more accurate and sophisticated forecasts are also crucial in helping us be prepared, she says – as well as understanding which weather patterns and climate conditions help generate atmospheric rivers in the first place.

Meanwhile, it may be at least some comfort to know that hundreds of dropsondes are falling through these mysterious storms each year, collecting data that makes them more predictable.

Wilson says the mission gives her hope, especially the work with responders on land, such as the emergency operations centre in California: "It's a really awesome feeling as a scientist to work on something that is so immediately applicable. This is making an impact right now for people on the ground," she says.

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This article was originally published on 14 May 2024, and was updated on 20 November 2024 with details of the "bomb cyclone" and atmospheric river reaching the US Pacific Coast.

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Why a wildlife trust needs funds to restore land

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yree7p77zo, today

"It's three fields and lots of wet bits in between".

That is a wildlife trust's description of Betchcott Hill, a bit of land in the Shropshire Hills it has just purchased.

It now needs to raise more than £130,000 by the end of the year to help restore the habitat, home to many species of wildlife. The hope is that it can help boost the numbers of some declining species.

"It’s a wonderful place, it’s a wonderful bit of landscape with some fantastic views, but it’s also got some amazing habitats and some really interesting species," said Tom Freeland, Shropshire Wildlife Trust's head of nature reserves.

What is Betchcott Hill?

The 50 hectare (123 acres) site, between the Stipertones and the Long Mynd, is home to a multitude of habitats and many species of wildlife, which the trust is hoping to help thrive.

"You’ve got some lovely wetland areas, which are great for the breeding birds and the other species, we’ve got some really interesting wet woodland but we’ve also got quite a lot of grassland," Mr Freeland said.

"We're confident that [grassland] can become, in essence, special grass like you can see on the Stiperstones."

This grass is much more beneficial for the species already trying to breed on the site, he added.

Which species will benefit?

"Skylark and snipe, cuckoos and lapwing," said Mr Freeland.

"I think the most exciting and probably the bird that needs the most protection is the curlew, a real icon of the Shropshire Hills."

It is apparent that the curlew needs the help - the trust said their population in Shropshire dropped 77% between 1990 and 2010.

"We know that they have bred on site, we know that they attempted to raise chicks on this site last year, we know they didn’t successfully do so," he said.

"They are struggling as a species, they need that longish grass that they can safely raise their chicks in."

Why this site?

The trust is keen to connect their reserves in the Shropshire Hills area and Betchcott Hill nestles between two of their existing sites.

"I think we’re always looking out for the right place where we can make the biggest impact for wildlife," said Mr Freeland.

"This is an opportunity that came up, to pick up what is essentially a missing link between the Long Mynd and the Stiperstones, and our other existing reserves we have in the area like Earl's Hill and The Hollies.

"It needs some work to get to be as good as some of the other places we’re looking after, but we’re confident we can get it there."

What will the money fund?

In total, Shropshire Wildlife Trust needs £1,113,000 to make this all happen.

It has already secured £975,000 towards that total. Of the remaining £138,000, the public has already raised more than £32,000.

"This is really only the start," said Mr Freeland.

Changes to the habitats include the introduction of new hedgerows, green hay to improve the grassland, accessible parking, and creating feeding sites for the curlews.

Not wanting to wait, the trust is starting work this winter.

"One of the things we need to do as a priority is to manage the site for the curlews and the other breeding birds," he added.

"The work starts now, really."

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Wind farm plans are progressing, deputy says

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglzrv60dvo, today

A member of a committee looking at the potential for wind power in Guernsey has said they hope to bring proposals to the States in January next year.

Deputy Carl Meerveld, who sits on the offshore wind sub-committee, told an energy and economy meeting the island was "closer" to getting wind power.

"Anybody who lives here knows we have wind, and it blows very frequently... also we are statically located between England and France, two major markets that we have the opportunity to export to," he said.

Mark Leybourne, co-founder of Dyna Energy, said the island had a "great opportunity" to generate wind power.

Mr Leybourne said: "There is a lot to do but it is achievable.

"It is about showing what the opportunity is for the islands, whether it is electricity or economy, how the island can go about getting hold of that opportunity and delivering it for the benefit of the islanders."

Meerveld added: "There are two elements to what Guernsey is looking at in the way of wind farms.

"There is electricity strategy which is looking at a small installation for Guernsey supply, but the offshore wind group is looking at a pure export utility scale wind farm, exporting all of the energy to England and north France to earn money for the islands."

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GB Energy could bring 300 jobs to Aberdeen - boss

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgqypkd0x47o, today

Up to 300 jobs should be created at GB Energy's new headquarters in Aberdeen, its new boss has said.

Juergen Maier, who was appointed chairman in June, told a House of Commons select committee that a workforce plan had not yet been created but his estimate was there would be 200-300 roles in the city.

He said there was "a lot of opportunity" to take people from the oil and gas sector for the state-owned energy company, which was a flagship policy during the Labour government's general election campaign.

However, Mr Maier said it would be "well into next year" before GB Energy starts making any investments.

Those initial investments would be "very modest,” he said - with just £125m earmarked in the first phase.

The UK government has committed to invest £8.3bn over the parliamentary term.

Mr Maier said that the focus of investments would be technologies like floating offshore wind, tidal power and large scale energy storage but the investments would be "unapologetically long term".

He said it expects to be returning a profit within five years.

Mr Maier, the former boss of Siemens UK, was appointed to the role of the Aberdeen-based energy company in July but it was later revealed he would be based in Manchester.

He was appearing before the Commons' energy security and net zero select committee.

'National champion'

Since GB Energy was announced, the renewables industry has raised concerns that it could skew the market to the point that it puts off the private sector from investing.

Mr Maier told MPs that in his first few months in the role he had "managed to reassure the private sector" that it is not going to compete with them and that he was "very confident" it will be able to create "a lot more" private investment.

He said the plan is to buy "minority stakes" in renewable energy projects but that as a "commercially savvy, innovative company" he will be looking for revenue streams.

In 10 years’ time, he said he expected it to be a "national champion" for the energy sector.

He added that the model for setting up GB Energy was being based on state owned companies like Vattenfall in Sweden and Denmark's Ørsted, both of which have operations in the UK.


Oysters as large as cheese plates: How New Yorkers are reclaiming their harbour's heritage

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241118-how-new-yorkers-are-reclaiming-their-harbours-heritage, today

Over the course of 10 years, the Billion Oyster Project, one of New York's most ambitious rewilding initiatives, has planted 150 million larvae in its harbour. Did it work?

The eastern oyster has lived in the Hudson River estuary for at least 6,000 years. With 350 sq miles (900 sq km) of oyster reef, some biologists estimate that the New York harbour used to contain half of the world's oyster population. 

Historically, oysters were deeply woven into the life of East Coast cities, as Charles Dickens described enthusiastically in his travelogue American Notes. On the difference between dinners in London and Boston, for instance, he notes that Americans would serve "at every supper, at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily". 

In New York, Dickens describes cellars serving "oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese-plates". "Dutch reports of foot-long oysters were only slightly exaggerated", confirms Matt Kurlansky in his 2007 bestseller The Big Oyster, a term he coined to signify how important the bivalve was not only to the culinary life of the city, but also its businesses and even its buildings. Kurlansky writes that Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan was built with oyster shell mortar, and the nearby Pearl Street, originally on the waterfront, got its name from a 'midden', a mountain of discarded shells that was apparently located in its vicinity.

That thriving population of oysters is long gone. But over the past 10 years, one of New York's most ambitious rewilding projects has sought to revive its once-famous oysters, adding 150 million larvae across 20 acres of harbour since its beginnings. The goal: restoring the city's coastal habitat, improving water quality and educating the public. Ten years on, there are still many more oysters to go until they reach their headline billion. But for those added to the harbour so far, how well did it work? And why was such a project needed in the first place?

Largely attributed to over-harvesting and pollution, the oyster decline started as early as the 1700. In 1849, a cholera outbreak prompted the construction of a sewage system that dumped waste directly into the waterways. Soon after, a link between typhoid and eating oysters was established, and one by one, all oyster beds were closed by the Health Department.

The last of New York’s oyster beds, in Raritan Bay, shut down in 1927. Kurlansky collected newspapers from the time – decades of articles denouncing the poisoning of the harbour and the outrage of New Yorkers, who used to have their favourite oyster beds, much like people today favour certain grapes for their wine. None of these outcries prompted any change. "A student once asked me if it was just like climate change," Kurlansky tells me, noting how struck he was by the child's perceptiveness. 

But the oysters weren't gone forever. In 1972, with the Clean Water Act, the city started taking better care of its rivers, prohibiting the dumping of waste and raw sewage into the harbour.The act provided a legal framework to regulate pollution in the country, and although on its 50th anniversary in 2022, the White House said that "we still face serious threats to clean water", the act overall improved water quality in rivers poisoned by the industrial revolution.

The second big turning point in oyster history came in 2012, when a hurricane brought devastating damage to New York and the US East Coast.

"The conversation really changed when we experienced the impacts from Hurricane Sandy," says Carrie Roble, an aquatic ecologist and vice president of estuarine education at Hudson River Park. "Our city began to ask, what's next, how do we protect our communities?"

Some experts were already working on it. In 2003, Murray Fisher founded the Harbour Public High School on Governors Island, which relates every aspect of its curriculum to water. Murray, who grew up on a farm, invited Pete Malinowski, who was born on an oyster farm, to teach there.

"I was never a super successful student," says Malinowski. "But as any good farmer, I had all this complex biological understanding [of marine life]. So, the idea of using farming as a teaching tool was really exciting to me."

Malinowski started an experiment with few students and a 30-gallon (110-litre) plastic bin in an empty basement room of Fort Jay on Governors Island. They filled the bucket with harbour water to see if oysters could grow and survive despite the pollution, and planted about 30,000 larvae, which in oyster terms is not a very large quantity, and in human terms is less than a teaspoon. 

From there, Malinowski and his students scaled it up and built a small aquaculture system growing a couple of million oysters on one of the piers. What started as a student project grew into a city-wide initiative, today partnering with several institutions, one hundred schools, and 75 restaurants that now recycle oyster shells through the Billion Oyster Project.

A study over six years at one of Malinowski’s sites, on the Tappan Zee area, a natural widening in the Hudson river about 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, found that oysters were living and growing both in the gabions (metal cages filled with empty shells) as well as in the reef balls that were deployed over 2.4 hectares (6 acres) of seafloor, and that "both substrate types were heavily colonised by oysters and several other species at all three sites".

One of the BOP partners, the Hudson River Park – hosting 15 oyster research stations along 4 miles (6.3km) of Manhattan waterfront – claims to have added 35 million oysters to the New York City waters since 2021 and is also optimistic about the project. 

"Some years can be more [environmentally] stressful than others, but the survival rate is pretty good," says Matt Hare, an associate professor in natural resources and the environment at Cornell University, and visiting scholar at the park. "I've been monitoring them since 2018, and this year we saw more [oyster] babies than we've ever seen before." 

The problem though, is that counting wild oysters is extremely challenging. Oysters send sperm and eggs out in water, where fertilisation happens, and larvae subsequently slosh around for two weeks, snacking on microalgae, until they get fat enough to glue themselves to a hard surface, and turn into juvenile oysters, also called "spat".

Because of the two weeks of floating around, it's hard to tell where spats came from. Are they the offspring of a successful rewilding project, or were they washed downstream from richer breeding grounds because of currents and weather patterns? Genetics could help answer this question and Hare says he is working on it. "I am very anxious to get the lab work done," he says. "And find out how much of that came from the restoration oysters." 

Counting challenges aside, the project recently attracted some international attention. In September 2024, during Climate Week, the Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn took a ride on a small motorboat up the Hudson River and all around the tip of Manhattan to go see two oyster gabions in Brooklyn. He caught a couple of small crabs with his bare hands, threw them back in the water, posed for few photo opportunities by the Statue of Liberty and explored the possibility of bringing the oysters back to the Thames as well.

Ambitious oyster restoration projects in Bangladesh, Australia, Hong Kong and elsewhere are already underway, each on varying scales and with different priorities, be they slowing coastal erosion, protecting against storm surges or improving water quality.

"The goal is not to recreate what was here before the colonists, when it was wall-to-wall oysters," says Hare. "In my perspective, the goal is to bring back a functional oyster population that is self-sufficient. So that they are reseeding themselves, and we're not having to use hatchery oysters or hatcheries at all to keep repopulating them."

The main challenges for oysters are siltation – a kind of water pollution involving suspended silt particles, a result of coastal erosion – and fertilisers. Oysters don't like silt because it covers the hard bottom of the bay that the spat need to attach themselves to and grow. At the same time, fertilisers increase algae blooms and reduce oxygen rates .

"The ecological success of the project is seeing more oysters in more places every year," says Malinowski. "And we know that that's happening. The challenge: there still needs to be more, they're not popping up at a density that is adequate for the population to grow."

Since the eggs are fertilised in the water, density is key to reproduction. "In most places you get one to five, maybe even 10 new animals [in on one square metre of New York harbour] every year. What you really need is 100 or 200. And so, the population is going up, but it's not quite at a point where there's enough larvae in the system. And that's why we're putting millions and millions of oysters in the water." 

Oysters' filtration capacity can help the whole ecosystem, and Roble says that gabions provide home for "encrusting species like sea grapes, slipper snails, and sponges, plus smaller crustaceans including grass shrimp and mud crabs". When he pulls up the gabions, Malinowski sometimes finds seahorses, who originally wrapped their little tails around eelgrass, and now are anchoring themselves to the metal frame. Moreover, Hare is fascinated by oysters' evolutionary potential. Every season, a female oyster can send 50 to 100 million eggs into the water.

"When you have that level of fecundity and mortality every generation, natural selection has an opportunity to be very strong in every generation," says Hare. "And yet this is a species that has been around looking the same for many tens of millions of years. They're not the poster child for fast evolution in visible terms: Things getting bigger or smaller or longer or shorter. But my studies have been more about what is the possibility of oysters evolving to help them deal with changes we expect from climate change." 

It's perhaps not the kind of research that Malinowski saw coming out of his 30-gallon bucket 10 years ago. Today, he says that the main accomplishment of his project, even more than increasing oyster population, is reminding New Yorkers that they are islanders. 

Born on the starkly beautiful Fishers Island in the New York archipelago, Malinowski says that coming down to the water's edge, pulling up an oyster cage, holding a crab in a hand, or finding a seahorse, is an experience that can have a life-changing impact on young people, and shift the way they see their city and the planet. 

"Ultimately," says Malinowski, "it's hard to care about something that is only abstract, something you don't have experience with. Ultimately, people have a much greater ability to improve water quality than the oysters ever will."

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'A bullet train for power': China's ultra-high-voltage electricity grid

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ultra-high-voltage-grid-pay-off-for-renewable-power, today

China produces more clean energy than any other country. Now it's rolling out an ultra-high-voltage grid to match – will its strategy of going big pay off?

In a sleepy village on the fringes of Shanghai, China's megacity of 25 million people, a hulking green building surrounded by a labyrinth of electric wires and poles stands in contrast with the landscape around it. Surrounding this beast, not far from the coastline of Hangzhou Bay, the vast funnel-shaped inlet of the East China Sea, are an array of vegetable plots, winding country paths and a tranquil canal.

This oddly out-of-place building is the Fengxian Converter Station, a hub for receiving electricity that has travelled some 1,900km (1,200 miles) before it is routed to power Shanghai's homes, offices and factories. At the other end of the transmission line lies the Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station in south-west China, which harnesses the energy of the mighty Jinsha River, the upper stretches of the Yangtze River.

The Xiangjiaba-Shanghai transmission link, which went into service in 2010, is one of China's first ultra-high-voltage (UHV) projects – a technology designed to deliver electricity over long distances. It spearheaded an era that would see the country build a vast network of UHV infrastructure, dubbed the "bullet trains for power", to send electricity generated from hydro and coal in remote regions to populous cities. 

China now considers these huge power cables key to its rapid buildout of wind and solar power bases, which are concentrated in several far-flung regions. Countries such as the UK, India and Brazil have adopted similar strategies.

Although using UHV isn't the only way to transmit renewable energy, its application in China – home to the world's largest national power system – can provide valuable lessons in a global quest for solutions to fast-track the energy transition.

The 'bullet train for power'

In a nutshell, UHV transmission lines work to the principle that the higher the voltage is, the lower the electric currents are for the same amount of power transmitted. Lower currents lead to less heat loss as power moves through cables, enabling it to travel long distances with greater efficiency.

The Chinese call them the "Shinkansen for power", using the Japanese name for bullet trains, a symbol of speed and efficiency.

For Guo Liang, an engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the fastest way to supply electricity is to wire it to its users rather than transporting raw materials to power plants that are closer to them.

Electricity travels nearly as fast as light and is expensive to store. "As soon as it is generated, it needs to be sent out. That's why we need such a network, the Shinkansen for power, to ensure its transmission" to those who use it, Guo said during a talk show on China Central Television.

Different countries have different thresholds for what is considered a UHV line. China defines those sending direct currents (DC) at voltage levels of 800 kilovolts (kV) or above and alternating currents (AC) at 1,000 kV or above as UHV links. DC systems can carry more power with less loss than AC, and are used to cover greater distances, but they are more expensive to build. In comparison, AC lines can be connected to the local grids enroute, so they are more flexible. But their lengths typically do not exceed 1,500km (930 miles), so as to be cost-effective. China has a mix of them.

Although China now regards the technology as a key part of its wind and solar plan, it didn't set out to build them for renewables. China's State Grid, one of the country's two grid operators, proposed the technology to the government in 2004 to connect the country's hydro and coal power stations with the economic hubs that gobbled electricity hundreds of miles away.

"Most of China's natural resources are situated in the north, north-west and south-west, while the highest electricity demand and population are concentrated on the southern and eastern coast," says Deng Simeng, a Shanghai-based renewables analyst at Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy.

In the early 2000s, China was experiencing regular power shortages. Even though three-quarters of the country's freight traffic was devoted to transporting raw materials, especially coal, resources weren't arriving fast enough. At that point, the central government was also seeking ways to develop its vast western regions by tapping into its resources.

Liu Zhenya, the then head of China's State Grid and dubbed by the Chinese media as the "father of UHV power lines", envisioned a future where a mega grid would end the country's blackouts – by transmitting electricity nationwide – and make China a global leader in transmission technologies. But his idea was met with staunch opposition. In the years to come, his opponents, which included officials and prominent scholars, repeatedly highlighted to the government their concerns, such as the reliability of the technology and its impacts on the environment.

"[Liu's] proposal was really bold and a novel concept at the time, and gained traction amongst Chinese policy makers," says Fiona Quimbre, a Cambridge-based analyst focusing on China at RAND, a global research organisation. The State Grid, a major state-owned company, managed to align itself "really well with other government priorities", including a plan to foster domestic supply chains, she says.

In 2006, developing UHV made into Beijing's five-year plan, a sign that it had become a national strategy. China began constructing its first project in the same year, a 640km (400-mile) AC link connecting its coal heartland of Shanxi in the north to the central province of Hubei, via a stop in the middle. It went into operation in early 2009.

More ambitious projects quickly followed. The Xiangjiaba-Shanghai line, completed in 2010, was the longest and most powerful transmission system worldwide at the time. With 3,939 pylons carrying cables over gorges, rivers and rolling fields across eight provincial-level regions, the DC link sends Jinsha River's hydropower directly to Shanghai at a maximum capacity of 6.4 gigawatts, meeting up to 40% of the city's power demand.

As of April 2024, China had put into operation 38 UHV lines, which deliver not only hydro and coal power, but also wind and solar power, according to China Power Equipment Management Net, an industry website. Among them, 18 were AC lines and the rest DC lines.

Delivering renewables

UHV technology was not invented by China, but Beijing has made these projects "business as usual", says Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, a Washington DC-based economist at RAND who specialises in energy and transmission infrastructure.  

"China has taken [UHV] to the next level and pushed the envelope" in a way it has with many technologies associated with energy transition, Arciniegas says.

He describes China as "the only game in town" when it comes to the number of miles built of this technology. Other countries, such as India and Brazil, also have some of the longest UHV lines in the world, but they do not use them at quite the same scale or operate at the same level of voltages.

According to China Energy News, the combined length of the UHV transmission lines operating in China had reached 48,000km (30,000 miles) by the end of 2020, more than enough to wrap around the Earth by the equator.

As China has accelerated its renewable energy deployment, the mission for UHV lines has changed. In 2022, the country's National Energy Administration said desert-based wind and solar bases should plan transmission lines to bring out their electricity to towns and cities on the other side of the country. In 2023, construction started on the first such dedicated line, linking the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the north-west with the southern province of Hunan.

The technology acts as a key component in China's proposal to build a global power grid, known as the Global Energy Interconnection. The idea – announced by China's president Xi Jinping at a United Nations summit in 2015 – is to link up national grids over the next three decades. The aim is to enable "large-scale development, transmission and utilisation of clean energy around the globe", according to a presentation in 2019 by Liu Zhenya, who chaired the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization, a non-governmental organisation set up to promote the concept.

To some researchers, UHV brings obvious benefits. "Of all existing technologies, UHV is the only one that can send wind and solar power from far-flung areas to load centres (places with high electricity consumption)," says Fang Lurui, an assistant professor of power-system planning at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China.

Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), agrees that the distances between energy production sites and cities is a challenge in such a large country. But the technology comes with energy benefits, too.

"China is so large – when the Sun has set in eastern China, it is still shining in western China," says Myllyvirta. "And when a low-pressure zone is generating high winds in one part of China, another part of China will be part of a completely different weather system at the same time."

Therefore, UHV transmission lines can even out the variations in solar and wind generation by zipping electricity from a place that has favourable weather conditions to another that doesn't, he says.

Challenges for UHV

However, the share of wind and solar power carried by China's UHV lines is still low.

One of the reasons is related to their high cost. In China, the investments for UHV lines come from two grid operators, and the financial undertaking has been enormous. No official figure of a total investment has been released. But Huaxia Energy, a Chinese industry website, reported in August 2023 that the country had spent 1.6 trillion yuan (£173bn/$222bn) on UHV lines, which included 33 already in operation and 38 more under construction. The Xiangjiaba-Shanghai line, for example, cost 23 billion yuan (£2.5bn/$3.2bn), according to official figures.

Such vast inputs mean the grids must ensure those lines' annual operating hours in order to recover their investments. "Therefore, if there isn't enough wind and solar power when a line is expected to operate, it will send coal power instead," says Shen Xinyi, a researcher at CREA.

Because wind and solar power is intermittent, UHV lines still rely heavily on coal or gas-fired power to ensure that their transmission is stable, Shen notes.

In 2022, 56.2% of the electricity transmitted by UHV lines in China came from renewable sources, beating the government's target of "no less than 50%". But most of this was hydropower – which China classes as renewable and clean – a government report showed. While hydropower does not rely on fossil fuels, it has other environmental drawbacks, such as harming river health and releasing methane. The portion for wind and solar carried on the UHV lines is much lower, averaging 27.25%, according to an analysis of the report by Chinese thinktank Lingdian Energy.

The power shortages that struck China's Sichuan two years ago and this summer have exposed another weakness: the "rigid" management of UHV lines in China, according to Shen.

Even though Sichuan is the country's hydro hub, most of its newly built hydropower stations, such as the world's second largest hydropower plant, Baihetan, were designed to have their electricity exported to eastern and central regions via UHV lines. Even when there was not enough electricity to go around locally, Sichuan – home to several emerging manufacturing industries, such as lithium batteries – could not use its own hydropower because the UHV lines were not connected to the local grid, Shen explains.

Yu Aiqun, a research analyst with Global Energy Monitor, a US-based NGO points out that it may be more cost-effective for cities and towns to generate power locally than to import them long distance because of how expensive it is to build a UHV line.

Moreover, Chinese coastal provinces are planning to build nuclear and offshore wind power plants on a large scale, which means they may not need to import electricity in the future, Yu adds. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US have projected that the deployment of offshore wind power would reduce Chinese coastal regions' reliance on imported electricity and shift the country's transmission networks.

The global picture

China isn't the only country that has resorted to the UHV technology. Brazil, the largest country in South America, has two 800kV DC lines in operation, both built by China's State Grid. They send hydropower from the Amazon Basin in the north to populous south-eastern regions including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The State Grid is building another UHV line in Brazil.

In India, the government has initiated the Green Energy Corridor scheme since 2015, which includes dedicated transmission lines for renewable energy in states rich in those resources, such as Andhra Pradesh in the south and Gujarat in the west, according to Uttamarani Pati, a Bangalore-based renewables analyst at Rystad Energy. UHV lines operate at a voltage level of 765kV in India.

Cross-continental high-voltage projects – which run at voltage levels lower than those of UHV – are also on the drawing board in various parts of the world. In Europe, several undersea cables are being developed to bring solar and wind power from North Africa. They include Xlinks, a 4,000km (2,500-mile) link to hook Morrocco to the UK, and the project "GREGY" that connects Egypt to Greece, covering roughly 950km (600 miles). In the Asia Pacific region, a mega project called the Sun Cable has been proposed to export solar power from northern Australia to Singapore, which is 4,300km (2,700 miles) away, via Indonesia.

Moving electricity across borders – or across states in the US – faces other challenges in spite of the evolving technology, warns Arciniegas of RAND. The biggest hurdles are regulatory issues, he says. "You'll need a lot of paperwork, permits, etc, to make [this] happen and not everyone wants to have a transmission line next to their house."  

Cost is another roadblock, especially in the US. Not only all stakeholders involved in a long-distance transmission line must greenlight the project, relevant regional transmission organisations also will have to agree to share the cost, according to Wang Xuan, an advisor on clean energy strategies at Regulatory Assistance Project, a global non-governmental organisation. "That is why UHV hasn't taken off in the US," she says.

Mega grids also mean higher risks of mass blackouts if one part of it fails, like the widespread power outage that struck parts of Canada and the US in 2003, which was largely caused by a failure in the alarm system at an Ohio-based electric utility that affected the whole network. "The bigger they get, the more safeguards you will need to prevent something like that happening," Arciniegas says.

Ultimately, the solution to a renewable future won't rely on one transmission technology, but a mix of solutions, as many researchers believe. One alternative at the other end of the spectrum are microgrids, which see localised energy generation, storage and usage. They are gaining popularity in some developing countries because they are nimble and cost-effective.

"I do think that the distributed-level developments and individuals putting in place solar panels and community-owned wind, etc, are part of the solution," says Antony Froggatt, a London-based consultant on climate change and energy. "Because it's not just about local generation for security supply, it's also about education," he says. "Having these high-voltage lines from a different part of the world misses that opportunity about engaging people."

For Arciniegas, however, UHV transmission can be part of a portfolio of options countries need to consider, but it is a key one.

"What the grid provides is like a backbone, so you need to be connected to the grid somehow. But if the grid fails, then it would be nice to have an alternative," he says.

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'Out of sync': The trillion-dollar climate puzzle that's become a diplomatic nightmare

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241115-five-charts-explaining-a-trillion-dollar-climate-problem, today

As countries negotiate a new global goal to raise climate cash, these five charts show why discussions are so fraught.

A hundred billion dollars. It's a staggering amount of money, although there are in fact now 16 individuals with personal assets worth more than this amount. But at the ongoing UN climate talks it's also a highly loaded figure, especially for countries on the frontlines of climate change.

It's the threshold amount that, back during turbulent negotiations in 2009, rich countries promised to "mobilise" each year by 2020 to help the billions of people in developing countries transition to a greener economy and cope with the impacts of climate change. 

This may sound like a lot, but it is already considered too little. The new number that's being floated by many developing countries: at least a trillion.

Climate negotiators at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, are discussing the details of how much money rich countries should provide to poor countries to help them mitigate emissions and cope with climate impacts. What they haven't decided yet is how much it will be – or many of the other details, such as the target date to deliver the money and who will contribute. A huge range of options have been put forward by different groups and countries.

The question is ultimately one of justice, those countries say. Richer nations have, after all, historically caused the lion's share of climate change. Poorer nations not only have less means to make costly climate adaptations, but the problem of climate change was also largely not of their making. (Read more about the world's fight for climate justice).

Climate finance is "not charity", Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, a non-profit based in Washington DC, told a press briefing ahead of COP29. It is needed for the world to be "in a better place," he said, adding: "Developing countries cannot meet their transition goals if there is no finance."

As talks continue in Baku, here are five key charts to help put the fraught discussions into context – and show what is really at stake.

What's been paid so far?

Money is a tough topic that has caused a lot of tension at climate talks for decades now, even as climate costs around the world continue to rise.

Rich countries failed to meet their promised 2020 deadline for the $100bn goal, only reaching the yearly goal for the first time two years later in 2022, as the chart below using figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows. 

These countries have also been criticised for how they are delivering the money: for example, they are primarily providing money in the form of low-interest loans, that have to be repaid, rather than grants, which don't. Countries have also reclassified existing development aid rather than contributing fresh funding, according to a report by the climate news site Carbon Brief. Analysis by other organisations and researchers say the amount transferred is actually far lower than the OECD figures, meaning the $100bn goal still hasn't been met.

Speaking at COP29, UN climate chief Antonio Guterres said "now more than ever" finance promises must be kept. "Developing countries eager to act [on climate change] are facing many obstacles: scant public finance; raging cost of capital; crushing climate disasters; and debt servicing that soaks up funds," he said. "We need a new finance goal that meets the moment."

If the new climate finance goal fails, we will all feel the impact, says Charlene Watson, senior research associate at Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a global think tank based in London, UK. "It [would be] a global failure. We are all not reaching the global 1.5C target." (Read more about why 1.5C is a critical threshold for the climate).

Why do we need a new finance goal? 

The focus on climate finance is coming now because back in 2015, countries at the COP21 talks in Paris agreed to set a new collective goal for it before 2025. 

The $100bn goal, which was announced 15 years ago at a previous conference, COP15, is "now clearly out of sync with the total needs" of developing countries, says Joe Thwaites, senior advocate in international climate finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a US non-profit.  

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The only conditions fully agreed so far for the new goal are that it will be "from a floor of $100bn per year" and "take into account the needs and priorities of developing countries". 

The original $100bn goal, in contrast, was a political number, says Watson. "It wasn't a number that was based on developing country needs. The [new goal] is supposed to be based on those needs. And those needs are just tremendous."

What's actually needed?

It's hard to say exactly what reducing emissions and coping with climate impacts has already cost developing countries or will cost in the future. This has led to a huge range of estimates of the money that is needed via the new goal.

Scientific understanding of these needs has come on "leaps and bounds" in recent years but is still challenging, "particularly as we've got so many moving pieces", says Thwaites. "The cost of [green] technology is going down in many cases, but on the other hand, climate impacts are increasing far faster than we were necessarily expecting. So it's very complicated to model these things out."

The chart below shows the large range in estimates of annual climate finance needs in developing countries by 2030. Even though estimates of what's needed are "not perfect", adds Thwaites, "they do show that total needs are in the trillions of dollars per year". 

One key estimate of needs comes from research by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of developing countries' national climate plans. It found that, in total, these countries have said they need $502bn (£394bn) specifically from developed countries each year until 2030.

Their total financial needs, however, amounted to more than 10 times this value at $5.8-5.9tn (£4.5-4.6tn), and it's not clear where most of the remaining money would come from. Many countries also didn't account for all the costs of climate change, such as the irreversible losses and damages caused by climate-related disasters, which is not covered by the $100bn goal but developing countries are calling for the new goal to include this.

These values may also change when countries update their national climate plans by early 2025. On the other hand, a stronger new climate finance goal at COP29 could lead to stronger national climate plans from poorer countries.

Ahead of the current talks, some developing countries and groups of developing countries put "very big numbers on the table", says Watson. "They want the goal to look like a trillion [dollars per year]," she says. "Developed countries haven't yet officially put a quantum on the table, so we don't know how much bigger than $100bn it's going to be."

An expert group of economists established by the COP26 and COP27 presidencies has similarly recommended that rich countries spend $1tn (£785bn) annually by 2030 on climate and nature investments in developing countries, out of $2.4tn (£1.88tn) in total needs in these countries.

But this calculation does not take into account China's financial needs. China is considered to be a developing country in the UN climate process, this makes the economists' calculation "a difficult number to try and use in a [final COP] decision", says Thwaites.

How $100bn compares to fossil fuel earnings

It's often pointed out that $100bn is a drop in the ocean compared with the money flowing through financial markets around the world.

Notably, revenues in the oil and gas industry have averaged close to $3.5tn (£2.75tn) per year since 2018.

Oil and gas earnings soared from 2022 due to the surging price of oil and gas following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, the world's largest five fossil fuel companies paid their shareholders $111bn (£87.4bn), according to analysis by Global Witness, a non-profit with offices in London and Washington DC. BP and Shell both reported their second highest annual profit in a decade in 2023, a total of $13.8bn (£11bn) and $28.2bn (£22.3bn) respectively.

Fossil fuel companies' revenues, combined with soaring coal, oil and gas emissions, have led some groups to suggest sourcing climate finance directly from the fossil fuel sector. 

One proposal, backed by several climate vulnerable nations and a range of non-profits, is for polluters to pay an international tax on fossil fuel extraction, which they say would also encourage the phase out of fossil fuels. An analysis by campaign group Stamp Out Poverty found this "climate damages tax" could raise $720bn (£565bn) by 2030 to help the world's poorest countries with climate damages. 

Another proposal is to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies that benefit from high energy prices. 

However, fossil fuel taxes could only fund climate losses and damages temporarily as governments have agreed to transition away from coal, oil and gas. (Read more about what the world would look like if polluters footed the climate bill.)

Other suggestions for raising climate cash include a G20 wealth tax, a shipping emissions tax or even a frequent flier levy.

How the $100bn compares to climate damage

Climate change is already causing huge financial losses around the world. One 2023 paper found that the global costs of extreme weather attributable to climate change was an average of $143bn (£113bn) per year between 2000 and 2019. (Read more about how climate change is rewriting the rules of extreme storms.) 

Developing countries are often especially hard hit. While overall financial losses tend to be greater in richer countries, poorer countries see higher shares of GDP loss. These countries also suffer the most in terms of lives lost and disrupted.

Such losses are only set to get worse. A 2018 paper found that the loss and damage due to climate change in developing countries will reach $290-580bn (£228-456bn)­­ in 2005 money by 2030, equivalent to $468-936bn (£368-737bn) today. These damages could more than triple by 2050, it found. 

Damage to farming, infrastructure, productivity and health around the world will cost $38tn (£30bn) per year by 2050, according to analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Climate change has already committed the world economy to an income reduction of 19% up to 2050, the researchers concluded. 

What is polluters' fair share? 

One of the biggest debates over the last few years has been who is going to contribute to the new fund, says Watson. The previous $100bn goal was agreed to by 23 developed countries and the EU, and notably didn't include China, now the world's largest polluter. 

Many developed countries think some of the increasingly wealthy developing nations should be contributing to the new finance goal. "[They] want to see very specific provisions for who needs to contribute," says Watson. It's worth noting that many developing countries, including China, already provide some international climate finance, but that this is currently not counted towards the climate finance goal.

There is mounting frustration among developing countries that the world's biggest emitters have not paid their fair share of climate finance to date. ODI has estimated countries' fair share, based on their historical responsibility for cumulative emissions, GDP and population. 

Big emitters' failure to pay their fair share has led to "a lot of anger and frustration and a lack of trust and confidence", says Sarah Colenbrander, director of the climate and sustainability programme at ODI.

The US, for example, paid just $14bn (£11bn) in climate finance in 2022, less than a third of its fair share of $45bn (£36bn). In 2021, the country provided $9bn (£7bn) of its $44bn (£35bn) fair share, according to ODI analysis.

"America just repeatedly fails to deliver," says Watson. Climate experts also now see a Trump presidency as a major setback for global climate action and a huge roadblock to raising critical funds for climate vulnerable countries.

Even without US leadership, though, debates on finance will continue to be a huge focus in Baku and future climate talks.

"In the future, all COPs will be about finance," says Dasgupta. "That is where we need to come to an agreement and where the question of justice looms largest."

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'The sixth great extinction is happening', conservation expert warns

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93qvqx5y01o, today

With her signature shawl draped over her shoulders and silver hair pulled back from her face, Jane Goodall exudes serenity - even over our slightly blurry video call.

In a Vienna hotel room, a press team and a small group of filmmakers, who are documenting her latest speaking tour, fuss around her.

The famous primatologist and conservationist settles into a high-backed chair that dwarfs her slender frame.

On my screen I can see that behind her, on a shelf, is her toy monkey, Mr H.

The toy was given to her nearly 30 years ago by a friend and has travelled the world with her. Dr Goodall is now 90 years of age, and she and Mr H are still travelling.

“I am a little bit exhausted,” she admits. “I’ve come here from Paris. And after here I go to Berlin, then Geneva. I’m on this tour talking about the danger to the environment and some of the remedies,” she says.

‘The sixth great extinction is happening now’

One of the remedies she wants to talk about today is a tree-planting and habitat restoration mission that her eponymous foundation and non-profit technology company, Ecosia, are carrying out in Uganda. Over the past five years, with the help of local communities and smallholder farmers, the organisations have planted nearly two million trees.

“We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction,” Dr Goodall tells me during our interview for BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science. “The more we can do to restore nature and protect existing forests, the better.”

The primary aim of this project is to restore the threatened habitat of Uganda’s 5,000 chimpanzees. Dr Goodall has studied and campaigned to protect the primates for decades. But the activist also wants to highlight the threat that deforestation poses to our climate.

“Trees have to grow to a certain size before they can really do their work,” she says. “But all this [tree-planting] is helping to absorb carbon dioxide.”

‘Window of time to save climate is closing’

This week, world leaders have gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29 - the latest round of UN climate talks.

And Dr Goodall says taking action to slow down the warming of our planet is more urgent than ever.

“We still have a window of time to start slowing down climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Dr Goodall says. “But it's a window that's closing.”

Destruction of forests, and other wild places, she points out, is intrinsically linked to the climate crisis.

“So much has changed in my lifetime,” she says, recalling that in the forests of Tanzania where she began studying chimps more than 60 years ago, “you used to be able to set your calendar by the timing of the two rainy seasons”.

“Now, sometimes it rains in the dry season, and sometimes it's dry in the wet season. It means the trees are fruiting at the wrong time, which upsets the chimpanzees, and also the insects and the birds.”

Over the decades that she has studied and campaigned to protect the habitat of wild chimpanzees, she says she has seen the destruction of forests across Africa: “And I've seen the decrease in chimpanzee numbers.

“If we don't get together and impose tough regulations on what people are able to do to the environment - if we don't rapidly move away from fossil fuel, if we don't put a stop to industrial farming, that's destroying the environment and killing the soil, having a devastating effect on biodiversity - the future ultimately is doomed.”

‘He looked into my eyes and squeezed my fingers’

Hearing her speak in this way gives me a glimpse of a toughness that belies her well-spoken, gentle demeanour. When Jane Goodall began observing and studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, she was a trailblazer. Her research, now considered groundbreaking, was controversial.

She was the first person to witness and document chimpanzees making and using tools – the primates prepared sticks to fish for termites. Prior to her observations, that was a trait that was thought to be uniquely human.

She revealed that the animals form strong family bonds - and even that they engage in warfare over territory.

But her approach – associating so closely with the animals she studied, naming them and even referring to them as “my friends” was scoffed at by some (mostly male) scientists.

Her supervisor and mentor, Professor Louis Leakey, though, saw the value in her technique: “He wanted somebody whose mind wasn't messed up by the reductionist attitude of science to animals,” Dr Goodall explains.

“You don't have a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a horse and not give them a name. It's the same as when I studied squirrels in my garden as a little girl - they all had names.”

Her methods – and her sense of closeness to the primates she has dedicated her life to – have given her a unique perspective.

She tells me about a “wonderful moment” with a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard, the male chimp who she first witnessed making and using tools to catch termites. “He was the first to lose his fear of me,” she recalls.

“I sat down near him and, lying on the ground, was the ripe red fruit of an oil palm. I held it out towards him and he turned his head away. Then I put my hand closer and he turned and looked into my eyes, reached out and very gently squeezed my fingers.

“That is how chimpanzees reassure each other. We understood each other perfectly - with a gestural language that obviously predates human speech.”

‘We need to get tougher’

Dr Goodall’s career has often been challenging. She has written about the early years of her work for Professor Leakey, who was a renowned scientist, and who had enormous influence over her career. He repeatedly declared his love for her, putting pressure on her in a way that, today, might be viewed as sexual harassment.

But she spurned his advances and kept her focus on her work and her beloved chimpanzees. Now, having turned 90 this year, she does not appear to be slowing down.

So what keeps Dr Goodall going? On this she is emphatic – charmingly affronted by the question: "Surely people want a future for their children. If they do, we have to get tougher about [environmental] legislation.

“We don't have much time left to start helping the environment. We've done so much to destroy it.”


The 'precariously balanced boulders' that offer a window into seismic history

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241115-the-benefits-of-precarious-boulders, today

These giant rocks could roll at any moment. The fact they haven't offers a window into the shaking of ancient Earth.

They look like you could blow them over with a sneeze. Across the world, thousands of "precariously balanced rocks" are perched in strange positions, poised to topple. Once they would have been mere geological curiosities. Now they are improving our understanding of earthquake risk. 

The fact that these delicately positioned boulders still stand provides windows into deep history, long before modern-day seismometers could measure the shaking ground. "The only witnesses that we can consult are these precarious rocks – they're the witnesses of what once happened," says geologist Dylan Rood of Imperial College London in the UK. 

This, in turn, is allowing us to prepare for the future, by improving the earthquake hazard maps which inform disaster plans, insurance premiums and building codes. These wobbly, gravity-defying rocks are even helping engineers stress-test nuclear power plants, radioactive waste repositories and enormous dams. 

Fragile state

Precariously balanced rocks (otherwise known as PBRs) belong to a category of landform called "fragile geological features". Some exist due to erosion, such as rock arches or tower-like pinnacles. On land, Arches National Park in Utah hosts thousands of these features, where rainwater or freeze-thaw action has weathered sandstone to the point of imminent collapse. 

Meanwhile at the coast, the sea can carve fragile geological features into cliff-faces: arches form, until they eventually crumble, leaving behind sea stacks. One of the best-known stacks is the Old Man of Hoy in Scotland's Orkney Islands, often ascended by climbers. 

Other fragile geological features grow over time, like icicle-shaped stalactites or stalagmites. In some cases, they become many metres long, acquiring great weight, yet with a diameter no bigger than your arm. 

All these features are striking to look at, but precarious boulders are particularly photogenic: they look like they could be megaliths, placed on a perch by some past civilisation or deity. You can find them all over the world: Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire, England; Krishna's Butterball in India, and Kummakivi in Finland, to name just a few. In the US, they can be found scattered across several states, from the Metolius rocks of Oregon to Bubble Rock in Maine. In some countries, the rocks have even acquired religious significance: Buddhist devotees of the Golden Rock in Myanmar have coated it in gold leaf, and believe a strand of Buddha's hair prevents it toppling.

Precarious boulders gain their delicate balance for two reasons. Sometimes, glaciers have carried and dropped them in awkward positions. The forests of the northeastern US, for example, are peppered with these so-called "erratics". Other times, the boulders only appear to have been placed on a perch: what's actually happened is that their base has been gradually eroded to a narrow neck. 

Windows to history

While hikers tend to visit precarious boulders for the selfies, seismologists admire these rocks for different reasons – because they can reveal earthquake activity during the deep past.  

To appreciate how, you have to rewind to the early 1990s. Back then, geologists noticed a curious pattern in precarious boulders in California and Nevada: they were generally less abundant close to fault boundaries. This planted an idea: perhaps the rocks could reveal insights about ground shaking before precise seismometers were invented. If a precarious boulder is found in an area – and you can figure out how long it has been poised to fall – it means the ground has not rumbled enough to topple it.

One of the first boulders to be analysed in this way was Omak Rock in Washington State – a glacial boulder balanced on a tiny perch, around 90km (55 miles) south of the US-Canada border. Back in 1872, a severe earthquake shook the Pacific Northwest, but the technology of that time could not capture exactly how much the earth moved. Omak Rock's survival on its perch helped geologists estimate an upper bound on how much shaking may have happened.

It's even more difficult to assess earthquake impacts before human records began. In the field of paleoseismology, geologists look for signs of pre-historic ground motion like fault ruptures, landslides or tsunami detritus, but many quakes leave little trace in the geological record. When seismologists find precarious boulders that have stood for thousands of years, however, they serve as witnesses of such rare events. Analysing them is improving the accuracy of earthquake hazard maps, especially for rare rumbles that only happen every few thousand years. 

In September, for example, researchers with the US Geological Survey published an analysis of precarious boulders left behind by glaciers in New York state and Vermont. Fortunately, there were no surprises – the boulders suggested their maps were broadly accurate – but that's not always the case.

Two geologists who have helped to refine and fine-tune the analysis of precarious rocks are Anna and Dylan Rood – a married couple based at Imperial College London. They have developed a more precise, probability-based methodology for studying these seismic witnesses. 

If you came across the Roods scrutinising a precarious boulder in the field, you'd know it was them because the rock would be peppered with coloured tape. Along with lidar (light detection and ranging) scans and drone photography, these markers help them to create 3D computer models of the rocks, so they can simulate what would happen to them in various earthquake scenarios.

"We can calculate the probability of that rock toppling across a range of ground shakings, from very short, small shaking up to really extreme shaking," says Anna.

It's also important to check the boulders were actually wobbly during past quakes. To date their precarity, the Roods analyse cosmogenic isotopes within the rocks' quartz minerals, such as beryllium-10. These isotopes form when cosmic rays strike the quartz and are therefore more abundant when the rock's surface has been exposed to the atmosphere. This reveals how long a boulder has stood on its narrow perch, or alternatively if its base was once buried in soil or other detritus. "​​It's a clock," explains Dylan. "We can model when the rock was exposed."

With these techniques, the Roods have shown that some US hazard maps may require an update. By analysing precarious boulders at Lovejoy Buttes, close to the San Andreas fault in the Los Angeles region, they found the risks from a one-in-10,000-year quake may have been overestimated. The shake would be 65% less powerful in this region than previously estimated, they concluded. 

Vital infrastructure 

The Roods first met one another while analysing precarious rocks near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station in California. Since then, they and their colleagues have shown that the boulders can be particularly useful for stress-testing vulnerable infrastructure, such as nuclear facilities or large dams. 

In fact, precarious rocks have become so handy for the nuclear industry that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) now recommends they are studied for earthquake hazard mitigation near power plants. If engineers are risk-assessing a nuclear power station, they need to know about the impact of the rare "big one" that could crack open their reactor. However, if there hasn't been one for millennia, it's difficult to estimate how bad it could be. 

When the Roods and colleagues mapped and analysed the boulders near the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant they were able to reduce the uncertainties in the hazard maps by nearly 50%. In late October, the pair were also due to begin studying France's fragile geological features, after the energy company EDF asked them to enhance the seismic hazard maps for the country's nuclear plants and hydroelectric dams.  

In future, precarious boulders could also help engineers decide where to bury radioactive waste. One of the first test-cases for the rocks in nuclear planning was Yucca Mountain, a potential nuclear waste repository in Nevada (now-scrapped). Researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno analysed nearby precarious boulders coated in "rock varnish", a clay-rich substance that builds up over long-term time in deserts. The varnish's presence told them some precarious rocks had stood without falling for as long as 80,000 years – hinting the quake risk to Yucca Mountain was acceptable. (Read more: How to build a nuclear tomb to last for millennia).

So, if you ever come across a precarious boulder when you're out on a hike, consider what it may have survived to remain in place. Even the Roods themselves still marvel that some of these wobbly rocks are still standing. "At one of the sites in California, you could actually rock them yourself. It really puts into context how fragile these are," says Dylan.

*Richard Fisher is the author of The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time, and a senior editor for Aeon. 

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'People collect spiders like Pokemon': Why the illegal tarantula trade is booming

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241029-why-the-illegal-trade-of-tarantula-spiders-is-booming, today

The global arachnid trade is threatening the world's most famous spider species. And it's primarily driven by souvenir collectors.

With their eight beady eyes and furry limbs boasting retractable claws, tarantulas are polarising creatures. During Jackie Peeler's more than 40-year career managing creepy crawlies in zoos and museums, she's seen people love and fear them in equal measure. About 25 years ago, she used to run a mobile zoo programme where she would shuttle tarantulas around to places like outdoor festivals and malls. She'd take them out of their carriers and show them off to captivated crowds who'd exclaim over their furry legs and cartoon-like expressions.

"There is a powerful connection when people can see something they may never see in the wild," says Peeler, now manager of the animal care centre at the Boston Museum of Science. "Invertebrates and insects can be one of those things that people, even when they're terrified, are still fascinated by."

Peeler doesn't condone showing off tarantulas in such a way anymore – they should have agency to hide from crowds if they want to – but even when they're not front and centre, these unusual creatures command attention. With that magnetism comes a dark undertow; enthusiasts are driving the illegal trade of tarantulas worldwide.

"Tarantulas are charismatic organisms," says Chris Hamilton, an assistant professor in the department of entomology, plant pathology and nematology at the University of Idaho. "That's what's great about them because we can use them to educate the public."

Hamilton believes the "tarantula hobby" started gathering steam in the 2000s. Today, researchers regularly see enthusiasts boasting collections of more than 100 species in online forums. "[These] forums show that people collect spiders a bit like people collect Pokemon – they want to 'catch 'em all'," says Alice Hughes, associate professor of biology at the University of Hong Kong. It's a spot-on analogy, considering how many different colours and patterns tarantulas can assume.

Unsurprisingly, the tarantula trade has become a small but prevalent staple of the multi-billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade industry. And it is not just unlawful – experts believe, along with climate change and habitat destruction, tarantula poaching could threaten some species to the point of extinction before scientists get a chance to study them.

"Tarantulas are especially vulnerable to poaching because they're long-lived – some reach 30 years old – and females reproduce late and infrequently," says Hamilton. "This is terrible for withstanding human disturbance (habitat destruction, pet trade collecting, or climate change) because of how long it takes to regenerate populations." He stresses that several range-restricted tarantula species (endemic to certain areas) – such as some in the genus Poecilotheria, native to India and Sri Lanka – are also "highly susceptible to extinction".

Keeping tarantulas as pets, however, doesn't seem to be what's currently driving the trade market. Some 43% of tarantula species are traded as souvenirs (for mounting and framing post-mortem), as research tools, and for medicine, according to a study. The souvenir market seems to be growing the fastest.

Wildlife poaching grew exponentially in the 1970s and 80s; around the same time, keeping tarantulas as pets became popular. As demand escalated, so did captive breeding and the legal trade market. However, Peeler believes the illegal tarantula market grew faster since doing everything above board takes time and money and involves acquiring permits. And it skyrocketed with the advent of the internet; suddenly, it was much easier for traders and tarantula fans to find each other.

There are seemingly endless ways to transport the small invertebrates, making regulating the trade market a complex and potentially untenable endeavour. In 2010, a German man sent hundreds of baby tarantulas packaged in multi-coloured straws via the US Postal Service. In December 2021, Colombian authorities at El Dorado Airport detained two people attempting to smuggle more than 230 tarantulas to Europe in one suitcase. In November 2024, a man was caught trying to smuggle hundreds of tarantulas out of Peru by strapping them to his body. Airport staff noticed the man's stomach looked an usual shape and found the animals in ziplock bags attached to two girdles around his body. It is thought he had been trying to take them out of the country to South Korea. 

Hughes says the other reason tarantula trade regulation is challenging is the lack of existing data (ecology, distribution and population trends) on the animals. This also makes it difficult to assess the full impact of the illegal trade on species. There are at least 1,000 known species of tarantula in the world today, and many others have either yet to be catalogued or have been catalogued incorrectly by traders.

More like this:

• Are Halloween pumpkins a future superfood?

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• The fight to bring a deadly illegal industry to justice

Only species listed under Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) are tracked, "but these represent just a very small fraction of the tarantula species in trade," says Carol Fukushima, a tarantula taxonomist and researcher with Bisons Lab at the University of Turku in Finland. "Many are sold and transported without permits or records through methods like 'brownboxing', where specimens are shipped illegally, mislabelled or transported as non-wildlife to avoid detection," she says.

Fukushima says there are also likely discrepancies in species naming and identification within the illegal marketplace, further muddying the real impact of the trade. "See the case of Chilobrachys natanicharum, traded for years as 'Electric Blue Tarantula' but only scientifically described in 2023," she explains.

Scientists need more funding to improve species cataloging and monitoring, but that's proven difficult to come by, Fukushima says she believes it may also be related to people's perceptions of spiders.

"It is known that the popularity of a species plays a significant role in attracting funding and supporting research and conservation," says Fukushima. "Unfortunately, arachnids and other invertebrates are typically not seen as charismatic or important by the general public. There is a widespread negative perception of arachnids, fuelled by arachnophobia and a lack of awareness about the crucial ecosystem services they provide, which benefit both the planet and humanity." Like most arachnids, tarantulas excel at controlling insect populations while also acting as a food source for larger species.

Media framing perpetuates these misconceptions and sensationalism surrounding spiders in general, research shows. "Too frequently – 41% [of the time] according to the report we analysed – the media portrays spiders negatively and includes numerous errors regarding their biology, ecology, and behaviour," says Veronica Nanni, the report's co-author and an ecologist focused on mass media, communication, and conservation.

Fukushima stresses that lack of funding for tarantula research, coupled with misinformed media attention perpetuating incorrect, negative stereotypes, makes it much more likely that tarantulas will be overexploited in a largely under-regulated arachnid trade.

Experts agree that bolstering tarantula trade regulations would be a step forward in conserving and protecting tarantula species, but it's an uphill battle. Of the over 1,000 species of tarantulas that exist, only about 3% are currently listed as protected on Cites (meaning they're actively monitored). The lack of official data on these arachnids makes it impossible to determine their vulnerability and develop corresponding conservation parameters.

Some countries are cracking down on the tarantula trade, including tarantula hot spots Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru and India, says Hamilton. "Countries like South Africa are particularly wary of spider trade, as many of these species could naturalise and become invasive," says Hughes. However, considering their small size and how unregulated wildlife trading online has become, Peeler doesn't think worldwide regulation is on the cards.

"The United States has some pretty strong rules in place. But they're not going to catch everything that comes across the border," says Peeler. "As long as there's a market, we'll always have illegal trade."

There is a silver lining to the unregulated tarantula trade; some experts believe it could indirectly help bolster some populations due to captive breeding. In fact, captive breeding might even help it become better regulated.

"[The tarantula trade] should be regulated by working with researchers and pet trade people to establish genetic reservoirs that can be maintained for the future – if any of these become highly threatened, or even go extinct in the wild," says Hamilton.

Hughes agrees that captive breeding can be a useful conservation tool as long as it's properly monitored. "A parallel is the EU wildbird directive, which has dramatically reduced the import of wild birds into the EU, and largely replaced this industry with one dominated by captive breeding," she explains. "Such an approach largely removes pressures on source populations and dramatically reduces the probability of transporting diseases and pathogens."

However, captive breeding is not a panacea for the illegal trade problem. Fukushima says improperly regulated and monitored captive breeding could indirectly stoke illegal and unsustainable trade. For captive breeding to be a genuinely successful conservation tool, a legitimate monitoring and tracking system needs to be in place at the start, and even then, it's not a perfect solution.

"Mexico has created successful legal captive breeding programmes with tarantulas. However, some Mexican breeders say that even these efforts may not be enough to produce specimens of Mexican tarantulas to meet market demand," says Fukushima.

She points to the implementation of a regulation comparable to the US Lacey Act, which prohibits the importation of specimens that violate the laws of their country of origin, in regions like the European Union as one possible way to bolster protections for neglected species like tarantulas.

We have a long way to go to properly safeguard tarantulas the world over, but experts agree the journey begins with educating the public on what fascinating creatures they are and why they deserve respect. The hope is this will lead to behavioural changes among collectors, encouraging them to choose more responsible, sustainable methods for procuring tarantulas.

If you're one of many people who get creeped out by spiders, Peeler's seen first-hand how quickly that can change given the right learning environment. One standout example happened at the Boston Museum of Science, where she met a little boy who was terrified of spiders but curious about one named Emily sitting outside her burrow.

"I asked him why he was scared, and he [went] on about how they're so foreign to him. [So] we talked for five or 10 minutes about how important spiders are, how many different types of spiders there are, and where they all live in the world. We talked about why tarantulas had hairs on their body and what made them different. And he was absolutely amazed," she says.

The little boy returned to the museum several times to check in on Emily and make sure she was eating well. 

* This article was originally published on 30 October 2024 but was updated on 15 November 2024 to include details about an attempt to smuggle tarantulas out of Peru.

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COP29 hosts accused of detaining climate defenders

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq52l95dd3vo, today

The Azerbaijani government is using COP29 to crack down on environmental activists and other political opponents, according to human rights groups.

This is the third year in a row a country hosting the climate summit has been accused of oppression and curtailing the legal right to protest.

Climate Action Network, a group of nearly 2,000 climate groups, told BBC News the protection of civil society is crucial if countries want to see progress on climate change.

The Azerbaijani government rejects the claims and says the government holds no political prisoners.

Global leaders are currently meeting in Azerbaijan to discuss solutions to a warming planet. But rights organisations have called for a review of how countries are selected to host the climate summit after what they say is a worrying increase in the number of environmental prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan.

Natalia Nozadze from Amnesty International told BBC News that since Azerbaijan was announced as the host country for COP29 in November last year it has become harder to oppose the government.

“We've seen a dramatic increase in arrests and clamp down on all issues that the government may perceive critical or contrary to its political agenda,” she said.

For the first time since the early 2000s the number of political prisoners - including journalists, environmental activists and political opponents - has reached more than 300, according to The Union "For Freedom of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan”.

Gubad Ibadoglu, a 53-year old professor at London university LSE, researches Azerbaijan's oil and gas sectors and environmental issues but in summer 2023 he was arrested on charges of fraud.

More than a year later he remains under house arrest. Human Rights Watch called the charges “dubious” and Gubad Ibadoglu's daughter has appealed to UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer for help in getting her father released.

"I think it is one of the rules of the authoritarian government, to arrest, to detain the people who have the power to impact opinion," Mr Ibadoglu told the BBC in an interview this week.

He says his life is in danger due to health reasons.

Anar Mammadli was arrested in April on charges of smuggling, just two months after he co-founded an organisation calling for the Azerbaijani government to do more to align with the Paris agreement - a major international treaty on cutting fossil fuel emissions.

Environmental activists want Azerbaijan to reduce its reliance on oil and gas, which finance around 60% of the government's budget.

But in January it was revealed Azerbaijan is planning on expanding production of natural gas - a fossil fuel - over the next decade, and on Tuesday President Ilham Aliyev told the COP29 climate conference that oil and gas are a "gift of god".

“COP29 - which was meant to be an open and inclusive platform for climate action - is shaping up to be anything but,” a close friend of Mr Mammadli, Bashir Suleymanli, told the BBC.

“Civil society groups that should be playing a crucial role in holding governments accountable have been sidelined or repressed,” he said.

Nazim Beydemirli, 61, was sentenced to eight years in prison in October for extortion. He was arrested last year after he protested about gold mining operations near his village. No evidence was presented during his 15 months of pre-trial detention. His lawyer, Agil Lajic, insists the charges are baseless, and part of a broader pattern of silencing dissent in Azerbaijan ahead of COP29.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt who hosted previous COP climate summits faced similar criticisms for their treatment of civil society groups.


UN climate talks 'no longer fit for purpose' say key experts

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lknel1xpo, today

The United Nations' COP climate talks are "no longer fit for purpose" and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.

In a letter to the UN, senior figures say countries should not host the talks if they don’t support the phase out of fossil energy.

This week the Azerbaijani president told world leaders gathered in his country for COP29 that natural gas was a “gift from God” and he shouldn’t be blamed for bringing it to market.

That came days after the BBC reported that a senior Azerbaijani official appeared to have used his role at COP to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.

The UN’s climate talks have made significant progress in recent years, despite the fact that unanimous agreement is needed among almost 200 countries to take action.

The Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015, outlines a long-term plan to rein in rising temperatures, as countries strive to keep that rise under 1.5C this century.

They have also agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, and to treble renewable power by 2030.

But while the authors of this letter recognise these achievements, they feel that the slow-moving COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” in dealing with a fast-moving climate crisis.

"Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity," said its signatories. They include former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.

The authors are concerned that the current COP process is not able to make change happen quickly or able to force countries to act.

At last year’s COP28 meeting in Dubai all countries agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”

But 12 months later emissions of warming gases have increased once again, up by almost 1%.

Scientists say these emissions need to fall by 42% by the end of this decade to avoid a global temperature rise in excess of 1.5C, considered the threshold to far more dangerous impacts than we are seeing at present.

One of the authors of the letter, Christiana Figueres, later qualified her support for reforms, saying they had been “misinterpreted in today’s context.”

In a statement she said: “The COP process is an essential and irreplaceable vehicle for supporting the multilateral, multisectoral, systemic change we urgently need. Now more than ever.

“We are committed allies to and advocates for this process — and lend our total support to positive efforts underway to further strengthen it for the new era of implementation we are entering into.”

The UN has yet to comment on the letter.

At the conference in Baku, negotiators from small island states were particularly concerned about any attempt to change the nature of the COP, where all countries are equal.

They worry that if decisions are made among the big emitters at forums such as the G20 group of richer nations, their small island voice will be excluded.

“We're not a part of those discussions,” said Micahi Robertson who’s an adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States at these talks.

The letter has been prompted by growing concerns about some of the countries chosen to host COP talks and their ability to deliver a significant advance in the fight against rising temperatures.

Just before the latest conference started, a secret recording showed the chief executive of Azerbaijan's COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing "investment opportunities" in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

At the start of COP29, the country’s authoritarian leader, Ilham Aliyev, defended Azerbaijan’s current exports of gas and plans to expand production by a third in the next decade.

“It's a gift of God,” he told an audience in Baku.

“Every natural resource whether it's oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources," he said.

"And countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them, the people need them."

The use of oil and gas are major causes of global warming, as they release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide when they are burned.

President Aliyev also hit out at France for carrying out colonialist “crimes” and “human rights violations” in overseas territories.

Such strongly expressed views are extremely rare from the leader of a COP host, where the aim is to build consensus on how to tackle rising temperatures.

The authors of the letter are also concerned by the selection process for hosting COPs. Azerbaijan followed on from another major oil producer, the United Arab Emirates, which held the conference in Dubai last year.

The authors say that host countries “must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement."

They also want smaller, more frequent COPs with clear accountability for the promises that countries make.


What if polluters footed the climate bill?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221026-what-if-polluters-paid-for-climate-change-loss-and-damage, today

Should rich countries and fossil fuel companies pay for the climate losses and damages they have caused?

In August 2022, Pakistan was devastated by catastrophic flooding. The unprecedented monsoon rains killed more than 1,500 people and left the inundated country with economic damages exceeding $30bn (£27bn). Within a month, a scientific study had concluded the high rainfall was "likely increased" by climate change.

The link between greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather events already happening today is now well established. Events such as Pakistan's floods, Madagascar cyclones  and Somalia's drought are becoming more intense and more frequent due to climate change. They have led to death and destruction and left countries facing immense economic damages, plunging them into debt and diverting funds away from other critical areas, such as healthcare and education.

What's more, these impacts are only set to get worse. If global temperatures were to rise by 2.9C, the average GDP of the world's 65 most climate-vulnerable countries will fall by 20% by 2050 and 64% by 2100.

The discussion of who should pay for climate losses and damages has become a major geopolitical issue and is expected to be high on the agenda at the upcoming Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November.

By 2030, vulnerable nations are likely to face $290-580bn (£260-520bn) in annual climate "residual damages" – damages that cannot be prevented with measures to adapt to climate threats. By 2050, the total cost of loss and damage could rise to $1-1.8tn (£890bn-1.6tn).

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who has become increasingly more outspoken on the injustices of climate change in recent years, has described the climate crisis as a "case study in moral and economic justice". He argues "polluters must pay" because "vulnerable countries need meaningful action."

As such climate threats become a larger part of our lives, many argue that the countries and companies responsible for the pollution in the first place should be the ones footing bill.

So what if we lived in a world where polluters really did pay for the climate damage they have caused? How much would they need to cough up, and would these payouts signal the end of the fossil fuel industry? Would this funding ever be able to alleviate the harm done? And could it mean the world's most vulnerable countries recover from climate disasters and adapt to looming threats?

 

Responsibility for climate change can be seen on several different levels – the actions of governments, companies, communities and individuals can all be linked to emissions.

A study published earlier this year by Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, in the US, provided the first assessment of countries' liability in fuelling the climate crisis. It concluded that emissions from the US, the world's largest historical emitter, cost the world more than $1.9tn (£1.6tn) in climate damages between 1990 and 2014. The next four largest emitters – China, Russia, India and Brazil – caused a further $4.1tn (£3.6tn) in global economic losses in the same time period. Combined, these losses are equivalent to around 11% of yearly global GDP.

"We show that there is a scientific basis for [climate] liability claims," says Justin Mankin, co-author of the study and assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College. "The science shows that if one country can have detectable damages; one country's foregoing [of] emissions can have detectable benefits. That's really essential… it overturns this narrative of 'what can one country do?'"

If governments were serious about covering the damage from this harm, countries could establish a loss and damage finance facility under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the UN's climate change body – which they would pay into in line with their fair share, says Sadie DeCoste, an organiser for Tipping Point UK, a non-profit working on climate justice. The fair share could be calculated based on their historical and ongoing contribution to global emissions, she says.

Having the fund as part of the UNFCCC process, rather than an external body, would help it to be "accountable and transparent" and ensure it is a "collective commitment to reach an agreed-upon sum", adds DeCoste. Such a fund should not be based on voluntary commitments made only by the countries that are more willing to pay, she says.

The world's most climate-vulnerable nations have called for such a facility to be set up, which would assess countries' needs after a climate disaster and request specific funds from governments based on factors including their contribution to global heating. To date, rich countries have strongly resisted these calls, insisting that humanitarian aid is enough to deal with the issue.

Fossil fuel companies are also increasingly being held accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions. A 2017 report from the CDP, a non-profit, found just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for producing 71% of all global greenhouse gases emitted since 1988. Another report from consultancy Profundo and non-profit Transport and Environment concluded that Europe's five biggest oil majors are responsible for some $13tn (£11.5tn) of damage in the past 30 years, including pollution, deteriorating public health and carbon emissions. These companies make enormous profits from extracting and selling fossil fuels, which have fuelled rising temperatures and exacerbated extreme weather events.

If the world's biggest fossil fuel companies were held accountable for these emissions, they could be forced to pay an annual sum, based on their share of global carbon pollution that has been emitted over the past 20 years, into a polluters-pay climate fund. This could help developing countries deal with climate impacts and the costs of transitioning to clean energy.

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Polluters could also be made to pay for any ongoing emissions via an international tax on fossil fuel extraction, as proposed by a coalition of climate vulnerable nations. Here, companies would be taxed for each tonne of coal, oil or gas they extract. Starting at a low rate and increasing every year, such a tax could raise billions to help countries rebuild and recover from disasters.

"[A climate damages tax] is a way of establishing accountability and responsibility," says DeCoste. It opens up a conversation about how polluters can provide vulnerable countries with enough funding to adapt to the climate threats they are facing, she says.  

Some governments today are already considering taxing the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies that benefit from high energy prices. Some of the revenues raised by such a tax could help vulnerable communities recover from extreme events, such as droughts and floods. However, a major limitation of this in the long run is that windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies are only intended to be temporary. "We need to ensure fossil fuel companies are taxed effectively and consistently all the time, not just with one-off windfall taxes," says Olivia Hanks, climate justice lead at the faith group Quakers in Britain.

However, since governments also need to set a timeline for rapid phaseout of coal, oil and gas, fossil fuel taxes could only fund climate losses and damages temporarily, says Hanks – meaning other sources of finance will also be needed to pay for climate damages.

Industries which use a lot of fossil fuels, such as aviation and bunker shipping, could also be taxed to generate the necessary funds to pay for those suffering the impacts of climate change. Unsustainable behaviours, such as frequent flying and eating red meat, could also be taxed to raise finance for countries devastated by climate change, says DeCoste. The most polluting behaviours tend to be associated with the lifestyle of a small numbers of people with very high incomes – just 1% of the global population is responsible for 50% of flying emissions, for example, while 90% of people have never flown.

Airline travel levies, which would increase with each additional flight the individual takes, are a "fair, feasible, and suitable" way to raise loss and damage funds, some researchers say. They could generate up to $5-10bn (£4-9bn) each year, be easily collected at international flight departures, and be channelled to vulnerable communities through international bodies like the Green Climate Fund, which was set up to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Redirecting public money which currently supports polluting activities towards supporting those suffering the impacts of climate change could also make a huge difference. A recent report estimated that governments around the world currently spend a staggering $1.9tn (£1.3tn) each year on environmentally harmful subsidies, such as support for fossil fuel production and for intensive agriculture. This is equivalent to around 2% of annual global GDP – money that in many cases could instead be used to support victims of climate disasters.

Governments would play an important role in redistributing money in these ways, but the courts are another important avenue through which victims of climate disasters could compensated. Recent advances in the science of "climate attribution" are especially important here.

"Climate attribution allows us to quantify the contributions of particular fossil fuel producers on impacts such as global average temperature increase, sea level rise, and ocean acidification," says Kathy Mulvey, climate accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US.

Ongoing scientific advances in this area will enable lawyers to bring more cases against polluters, says Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy organisation in the US that works to hold polluters accountable. (Read more about why climate lawsuits are surging).

One 2014 study has been particularly influential in bringing more court cases against polluters, says Wiles. The study, written by Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, established a causal link between the actions of fossil fuel companies and climate impacts. It identified 90 fossil fuel and cement producers, dubbed the "carbon majors", as being collectively responsible for 63% of global emissions since the industrial revolution, and pinpointed the share of emissions each of these companies are responsible for.

"This was critical to getting [legal] cases off the ground," says Wiles. "[As a lawyer], you needed to be able to say that Exxon was responsible for a portion of those damages with data and that the company you're accusing of crimes can actually be proven to have contributed to the damage."

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil says the company has "long acknowledged the reality and risks of climate change and has devoted significant resources to addressing those risks."

"We have announced our ambition to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions for operated assets by 2050," he says, adding that the company is developing roadmaps for reducing emissions from its facilities and assets.

An important case which aims to use attribution science to sue for climate damages is a lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer against Germany's largest utility company, RWE. The lawsuit is the first case of its kind and could set a precedent for whether polluters should provide compensation for climate damages on a pro rata basis.

In the case, which is ongoing, farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya aims to hold RWE accountable for the role of its emissions in melting a glacier above his hometown, Huaraz, in the Peruvian Andes. Lliuya says RWE should pay 0.47% of the cost of building flood defences to protect Huaraz – which would amount to around €20,000 (£17,600;, $19,600). The amount is based on an update to Heede's study by the Climate Accountability Institute which attributes this share of global emissions to RWE.

Lliuya's lawyers are building their case on climate attribution science, including a 2021 study which concluded that the melting of the Palcaraju glacier is "entirely attributable" to rising temperatures and that the change geometry of the glacial lake and valley has "substantially increased the outburst flood hazard".

"We have a very clear picture of climate change being responsible for creating this very large lake that now threatens a city," says Rupert Stuart-Smith, the study's lead author and a research associate in climate science and the law at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.

The power of precedent "could mean that we will see more and more successful claims being brought before courts," he says. These could potentially be in jurisdictions across the globe and target a great number of companies, he adds. "If corporations with large emissions can be held responsible for their impact, then it could really be a game changer for pay action [polluters paying for climate damages] in many ways."

If court cases and taxes which made fossil fuel companies more accountable for the impact of their emissions did pile in, would this be the death knell for the industry – the end of coal, oil and gas?

It would certainly incentivise fossil fuel companies to switch to producing clean energy, such as wind and solar, instead of producing more carbon-intensive fuels, says Hanks. "If polluters knew they had to pay the full cost of their activities, we'd see the energy transition happen much faster."

Could this bankrupt fossil fuel companies? "If polluters are held responsible for the harm done as a result of their emissions, then you could be looking at vast sums of money," says Stuart-Smith. "I don't think it is unreasonable to talk about numbers in the billions of dollars. We could see payouts large enough that they would substantially impact [fossil fuel companies'] profits."

The fossil fuel industry is estimated to have made $2.8bn (£2.5bn) in profits per day over the last 50 years – $1tn (£891bn) a year and a staggering total of $52tn (£46tn). In a scenario where fossil fuel companies were asked to foot the entire bill of climate damages (projected to reach $290-580bn (£260-520bn) per year by 2030), this is equivalent to roughly 30-60% of their current annual profits.

Lawsuits can also directly impact a polluter's business model going forwards, adds Stuart-Smith. "We're seeing cases brought, for instance, challenging corporate and national emission reduction plans as inadequate," he says. A 2021 Dutch court ruling, for example, ordered Shell to reduce its emissions in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change. In November 2024, the oil giant won a landmark case after the Hague Court of Appeal overturned the earlier ruling requiring Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45%, stating that it could not establish that the company had a "social standard of care" to reduce its emissions by any amount.

The ramifications of lawsuits go beyond any direct damages paid by the companies, says Wiles. "[The real damage] is the reputational risk and the loss of their social license." He compares this to the reputational damage the tobacco and opioid industries suffered after they were forced to disclose the health risks associated with their products and make public key documents which highlighted these. In the case of opioids, this disclosure led to hundreds of new lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable. This could also happen to the fossil fuel industry, Wiles notes.  

For climate-vulnerable countries, funds put forward by polluters would be a lifeline. The long-term finance would allow them to invest in resilient infrastructure protecting them from extreme events, such as hurricanes and floods, as well as slow-moving threats, such as rising seas.

The money would also enable countries to strengthen their public health systems and cover the climate-related health costs, such as waterborne diseases, which are increasing due to climate change.

It could also provide compensation for workers losing jobs in polluting industries. The global coal industry, for example, is estimated to lose 4.7 million jobs in the clean energy transition, while the mining industry is expected to lose 4 million jobs. Compensation could also support workers who have lost their jobs due to climate impacts, such as farmers and fishers, says Mulvey.

Many developing countries are heavily reliant on fossil fuels to meet their energy needs and grow their economies. "But the path to development is dirty; it's industrialisation," says Mankin.

Mankin says it is unclear whether loss and damage funding would put these countries on a cleaner path and allow them to develop and at the same time adapt to climate threats.  But Hanks says loss and damage finance would create "financial and decision-making space" for developing countries to focus on the energy transition, rather than  having to "relentlessly deal with disaster after disaster with no money to do so".

Loss and damage finance could also make a huge difference for people who have been permanently displaced due to climate change. It is estimated that by 2050 up to 216 million people will be forced to leave their homes due to climate impacts such as water scarcity, declining crop productivity and sea-level rise.

The money could also pay for the restoration of vital ecosystems, such as mangroves and coral reefs, which have been damaged or destroyed by storms and floods and can provide vital protection against climate impacts.

 

In a world where polluters did pay their fair share, would it be enough to compensate communities for the losses they have suffered? Wiles says no matter what is paid it will "never be enough", because many communities will continue to see climate impacts into the future.

What's more, there are some climate impacts which polluters could never pay for – because they cannot be quantified or recovered at any cost, says Mulvey. "No amount of money can compensate for some climate loss and damage: lost human lives, cultural heritage, animal and plant species, and ancestral lands are among the most profound impacts," she says. "The sovereignty of a country that has lost its physical territory [due to rising seas, for instance] can't be brought back with money."

Still, polluters paying for damages would help redress global climate injustice and recognise that those who are disproportionately harmed by climate change tend to not be the ones who are responsible for causing it.

"It would help us think differently about responsibility," says Hanks. "It's about calling out the moral wrong, [and] also imagining the world and those power relations differently."

Capitalism teaches us a competitive mindset where as a country we shouldn't give money to another country and thus risk our strategic advantage, she adds. "But it is possible to think in more cooperative terms and realise that if [vulnerable nations] are thriving it makes [rich countries] more likely to thrive."

**

This story was originally published on 27/10/22 and was updated on 14/11/2024 with information about the Shell court ruling. 

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The mountaineers and hikers collecting data in extreme environments that scientists can't reach

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241112-the-mountaineers-and-hikers-collecting-data-in-extreme-environments-that-scientists-cant-reach, today

Collecting data from the most extreme places on Earth can require the skills of the most extreme outdoor enthusiasts.

Surrounded by glaciers and roughly 6,400m (21,000ft) above sea level, Willie Benegas spotted a pop of green moss wedged in granite. "Wow, this is an odd place for moss to be," he observed.

In 2011, Benegas, an extreme mountaineering guide, was 500ft (152m) above the steep, exposed terrain of Mount Everest's Camp 2 and – despite having summited Mount Everest over a dozen times – he still found himself "impressed". Using a sterilised cloth Benegas scooped the moss into an envelope to be transported to a lab on another continent.

The moss travelled from the planet's peak to Montana State University's Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, where Tim McDermott, an environmental microbiologist, analysed the bacteria living on its surface. From there, the moss continued to Rusty Rodriguez, a microbiologist for the United States Geological Survey, who was researching how plants form symbiotic relationships with fungi that can help them survive extreme conditions. His research revealed that these fungi can programme plants to withstand drought and temperature stress.

As plant life expands to ever-higher altitudes, it was hoped this moss could reveal how crops can adapt to increasingly extreme weather, withstanding frost and high ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The findings were later used to increase crop yields around the world – and Rodriguez developed a Seattle-based company, Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies (AST). AST manufactures fungal spores to enhance crop tolerance to extreme weather. Without the help of mountaineers and volunteers, says Rodriguez, this would not have been possible.

Benegas collected the moss samples for the non-profit Adventure Scientists, which acts as a matchmaking service between outdoor enthusiasts and scientists. "Scientists like to have samples taken in locations where it's difficult – sometimes damn near impossible – to get funding [to go]," McDermott says. "I was flabbergasted [Adventure Scientists] were even willing to try."

Gregg Treinish founded Adventure Scientists in 2011 after spending 22 months hiking the Andes, a trip which earned him and his partner Deia Schlosberg the title of National Geographic's Adventurers of the Year in 2008. An outdoorsman for years, Treinish hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2004 and felt a deep sense of selfishness in the awe-inspiring terrain of the Eastern United States.

Treinish discovered his hiking-related guilt rendered him in good company. While contact with nature is linked to psychological well-being, the juxtaposition with climate anxiety can make enjoying the outdoors complicated. New terms like eco-grief, Anthropocene horror and solastalgia are emotional epithets of environmental woes.

"Climbing is selfish," says Hari Mix, a mountain climber who collected data for Adventure Scientists during his Himalayan expeditions in 2012 and 2013. "There's no real point to it. I was looking for ways to add meaning or some kind of contribution to my trips."

Adventure Scientists, which targets the UN Sustainable Development Goals, partners with scientists – typically from universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – who need data to address environmental issues. The non-profit trains and manages volunteers to collect remote data as a cost-effective accelerator for conservation solutions around the world. Adventure Scientists has had more than 10,000 trained volunteers gather data for more than 120 partners. "Countless people love the outdoors and wish they could make a difference," says Treinish. "If we could galvanise them in a common direction, what we could achieve would be profound."

Adventure Scientists exists within the growing ecosystem of community science, also known as citizen science, which allows people of all backgrounds and ages to collect data and contribute to scientific research. Volunteer opportunities range from collecting data for public sector organisations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or Nasa, to helping private organisations like Advancing Participatory Sciences which connects researchers and citizen scientists.

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Though many view science as a specialised enterprise, Treinish simply describes science as a "process of inquiry". "By academic standards, I am not a scientist," acknowledges Treinish. And, according to an expert from the United Nations, science should not be exclusively for scientists.

The strength of Adventure Scientists lies in its ability to mobilise many people, says USDA Forest Service wildlife biologist Betsy Howell. In 2012, Howell partnered with Adventure Scientists in Washington State, US, to understand the conservation status of martens with the first winter of surveys starting in January 2013. There had been only six verifiable marten sightings since 1968, she explains.

"Martens are important members of the community but were, as far as anybody could tell, gone from the entire state," says Howell. So local volunteers, lugging motion-activated digital cameras and bait, descended on the remote, rugged, snowy terrain of the Olympic National Forest.

"People had to ski or snowshoe in," says Howell. "It can be extremely difficult to get around." After the volunteers hiked through the backcountry to install cameras, they returned to check the footage for martens. That survey did not document any Pacific martens. Still, Howell maintained that the efforts with Adventure Scientists in 2013 and 2014 were useful, as they highlighted the challenges of finding the animals.

"After I worked with Gregg and the team – and because of their work – we were able to apply for some special money and hire crews devoted solely to marten survey work to move them up in elevation even more. [We] got into even more remote areas and then finally started to get some marten hits," Howell adds, noting subsequent survey efforts from 2015 to 2019.

In Washington State, John Soltys, a long-time volunteer for Adventure Scientists, says data collection bestows a sense of "purpose" on his family's alfresco activities. Soltys stumbled upon Adventure Scientists in 2013 while on a camping trip to Berkeley Park in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington State. Soltys's young children became "absolutely mesmerised" by the scurrying pikas – mountain-dwelling, mouse-like mammals. Soltys scoured iNaturalist, a social network for sharing biodiversity finds. There, he found Adventure Scientists, which was also utilising the platform to collect data on pikas. His family now volunteers with the nonprofit 100 times a year, he says. "Yeah, we're doing that crazy stuff," he says.

Soltys and his family also work with Community Snow Observations, Living Snow Project and Cascades Carnivore Project to foster a love for the outdoors and environmental stewardship. Soltys' daughter even went on to pursue a degree in environmental science at the University of Washington due to these experiences, he adds.

Expertise and grassroots science can coexist, posits Treinish. No doubt, researchers with specific areas of expertise are necessary. Even a former member of Adventure Scientists' scientific advisory board, McDermott, acknowledged these "off the beaten path" samplings that private citizens can obtain are limited in sophistication. But adventuresome generalists, who are keen to get their hands dirty, can aid in furthering human understanding of the natural world. "If you're going to go to extreme lengths, why not make it useful?" asked Treinish.

"Whenever the global scientific community thinks about addressing an issue with boots on the ground, I hope they think about the solutions without a limit to data," says Treinish. "It's at our fingertips. We've got one chance, and we better make the most of it."

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