Updates from the 3pm BST kick-off in Astana
The Red Wall: Wales are expected to bring around a thousand supporters to Astana today but the odyssey undertaken by one bucket hat-wearing fan to get to his seat in the away end has really captured the public imagination.
John McAllister left his home in Barry over five weeks ago and on a largely overland journey of 5,000 kilometres involving 17 train journeys and 11 bus trips, has taken in 11 different football matches, an ice hockey game, some random Irish bloke’s stag do and a heavy metal festival en route while compiling a fascinating YouTube travel vlog.
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© Photograph: Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters
© Photograph: Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters
© Photograph: Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters
Ahead of her debut in London’s West End with the musical Hadestown, Roberts answers your questions on navigating overnight fame as a teenager and why she would drop everything to work with Kate Bush
How does it feel to finally be making your West End debut in Hadestown, after City of Angels was cancelled due to Covid? LucyHampton6
Super exciting. It feels like I’m experiencing a new way of performing. I said to the director when we first started that I wanted to throw myself into this and to be pushed as far as I can. When you’re in a band, or you’ve been perceived a certain way for a very long time, it’s nice to go into something where you can shake off the Post-it notes that have been put on you by yourself, or by other people.
If there was to be a musical made with the Girls Aloud soundtrack like Mamma Mia!, or Here & Now, what do you think the plot should be? Sophieeh
Our experience of going from complete normality into a talent competition and becoming somewhat famous overnight, and then the trials and tribulations that follow with teenagers trying to navigate new national fame, is enough of a plot. I don’t need to drum up some new far-fetched stories, because I feel like the things that were happening were far-fetched enough.
© Photograph: Michael Wharley
© Photograph: Michael Wharley
© Photograph: Michael Wharley
On the heels of their debut album Now Would Be A Good Time, the Melbourne indie band open up about life on the road, their global aspirations and ‘the pathetic little tragedies’ that occur in your 20s
As Folk Bitch Trio tell it, the music industry is a sadly predictable place.
“It’s exactly what everyone says it is, and exactly what everybody warns you about when you’re 18 and want to start working in music,” says vocalist and guitarist Jeanie Pilkington. “No one makes much money. The artist often ends up getting the shitty end of the stick. You have to work really, really, really hard, and sometimes it feels impossible.”
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© Photograph: Copper Taylor-Bogaars
© Photograph: Copper Taylor-Bogaars
© Photograph: Copper Taylor-Bogaars
Trump’s health secretary faces tough questions on about department layoffs and budget cuts amid scrutiny over his plans to ‘make America healthy again’
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will appear before a congressional committee on Thursday, where he’s expected to face questions about turmoil at federal health agencies.
The US Senate finance committee has called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again”.
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© Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
© Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
© Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Prosecution tells hearing Father Ted writer’s posts about Sophia Brooks, 18, were ‘oppressive and unacceptable’
Graham Linehan, the co-creator of Father Ted, “relentlessly” posted abusive and vindictive material on social media about an 18-year-old transgender activist, a court has heard.
Linehan’s posts about Sophia Brooks were “oppressive and unacceptable”, the prosecution told a hearing at Westminster magistrates court.
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© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
In an audacious move, director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of the five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army
There can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.
The result was greeted with a 23-minute standing ovation at Venice, about a quarter of the film’s running time, with journalists and festival attenders reportedly sobbing in the auditorium. Since that passionate reception, others have wondered if there is not something questionable or exploitative in presenting this authentic shattering recording in a Hollywoodised suspense drama, getting actors to cry and rage alongside a kind of docufictional hologram, almost instructing the audience in how they too should be responding. I wonder. Perhaps Ben Hania’s high-concept idea is debatable, and it might have been just as moving to present this extraordinary real-life recording in the straightforward documentary context of interviews with the responders and emergency workers. This might have made clearer what happened from their point of view, why they were impeded from helping Rajab and what continues to hinder them.
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© Photograph: PR Image
© Photograph: PR Image
© Photograph: PR Image
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