Prosecutors weigh possibility that the Chinese student, who treated his victims as ‘sex toys’, could face further action
Serial rapist Zhenhao Zou is facing a second trial with police and prosecutors preparing to charge the Chinese student with a second round of offences.
Zou, 28, is already serving a minimum 24 years for attacking 10 young women in London and China.
Witnesses say some of those onboard hurled themselves out to escape flames as reports say fire started from torch in balloon’s basket
At least eight people have died after a hot-air balloon carrying more than 20 people caught fire and plunged through the sky in Brazil’s deep south.
Footage posted on social media showed the moment the multi-coloured aircraft fell to earth, engulfed in flames, in the state of Santa Catarina on Saturday morning. At least two of the balloon’s occupants can be seen plummeting to the ground as the fire spreads. “My God!” one witness can be heard gasping as the basket hurtles towards the ground.
Winner will face Alcaraz or Bautista Agut in final
As Jack Draper has spent the past week trying to find rhythm and comfort in his first grass tournament of the season, Jiri Lehecka had bulldozed everything in his path. After two tension-filled hours, their form was reflected in the scoreline as the unseeded Lehecka toppled a frustrated Draper 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 to reach the final and deprive him of a shot at competing for a first title on home soil.
Although he competed brilliantly throughout the week, navigating two tough three-set wins over Alexei Popyrin and Brandon Nakashima, Draper has struggled as he continues to adjust to grass after a successful clay season and he has looked vulnerable in each match.
Across the US, the Active Club network uses combat sports to lure boys and young men into white nationalist circles
A neo-Nazi fight club that secretly infiltrated a Tennessee martial arts school where young children train has been banned from the facility, after an inquiry by the Guardian.
Last month, the South Central Tennessee Active Club published video footage on the messaging app Telegram showing its members participating in combat training at Shelbyville BJJ Academy, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in Shelbyville, Tennessee, that offers classes to students as young as three years old.
In first public comments on topic, Leo XIV has now signaled zero tolerance for sexual abuser priests
The Roman Catholic church must “not tolerate any form of abuse”, sexual or otherwise, Pope Leo XIV has said in his first public remarks about the worldwide clerical molestation scandal that has long roiled the church.
In a statement read on Friday at the performance of a play which dramatizes the work of a journalist who endured harassment while investigating abuse scandals within a powerful Catholic group, Leo maintained that it was necessary to inculcate “throughout the church a culture of prevention that does not tolerate any form of abuse: abuse of power or authority, of conscience or spirituality, of sexual abuse”.
Syarhei Tsikhanouski arrested shortly after announcing candidacy in rigged 2020 election won by Lukashenko
One of the leaders of Belarus’s opposition movement, Syarhei Tsikhanouski, has been released from jail after being pardoned after almost five years behind bars.
His wife, the exiled politician Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, who took over the opposition cause after his jailing, on Saturday shared a video of him smiling and embracing her after his release.
Californian Nancy Miller Stratford’s fiance forbade her from going to join the war effort. But her dream was to fly – so she broke off the engagement and went anyway
Nancy Miller Stratford sat alone behind the controls of a Spitfire fighter plane, charting an uncertain course through an impenetrable clot of dark clouds.
On the horizon, the young pilot could see a promising patch of daylight, “like the devil waving his hand to come on through”. But just as suddenly as the sky opened up, the clouds closed in again.
Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, plans to leave his money to all his offspring – conceived out of ‘civic duty’
Pavel Durov is a Russian-born billionaire whose interests include doing half-naked photoshoots with baby goats and having lots and lots of (human) kids. The 40-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram revealed last year– in a post on his own app – that while he isn’t married and prefers to live alone, he has over 100 biological children in 12 countries via sperm donation.
An increasing number of people are experiencing motion sickness in EVs, and there is a scientific explanation as to why
With electric cars skyrocketing in popularity around the world – in 2024, 22% of new car sales worldwide were electric vehicles, compared with 18% in 2023 – a growing body of studies and an increasing number of people have found that they feel more motion sick riding in EVs than in traditional petrol or diesel cars. Anecdotes of feeling sick in the passenger or back seat of electric cars litter social media, as do questions from wary prospective buyers.
There is a scientific explanation behind why a person might feel more sick in an EV, though, according to multiple academic studies.
The Senegalese women’s basketball team has scrapped plans to train in the US for the upcoming AfroBasket tournament in the Ivory Coast next month after several players and team officials had their visas denied, Senegal’s prime minister said.
Prime minister Ousmane Sonko said on Facebook Thursday that the team would train in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, “in a sovereign and conducive setting”.
Raids have brought life to a standstill for some immigrant residents while others pick up pieces after arrests of family
It has been eerily easy to find street parking in Los Angeles’s fashion district this week. In the nearby flower district, longtime vendors have locked up stalls. And in East LA, popular taquerías have temporarily closed.
Neighborhoods across LA and southern California have gone quiet since the Trump administration ramped up immigration raids in the region two weeks ago.
‘Profound concern’ as administration says Afghanistan safe to return to despite dangers posed by Taliban regime
Thousands of Afghans who fled to the US as the Taliban grabbed power again in Afghanistan are in mortal dread of being deported back to danger in the coming weeks amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown.
Many, including some who assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the botched withdrawal by the military in 2021, are contending with threats to their legal status in the US on several fronts.
The celebrated designer, 90, is believed to be saving his energy for his haute couture show in Paris next month
Giorgio Armani, the celebrated Italian designer and one of the most recognisable names in fashion, is to miss his shows at Milan fashion week this weekend due to ill health, for the first time in the label’s history.
A statement released by the brand on Saturday morning said the 90-year-old designer was “recovering at home” and “will not be present at the two shows as he usually is”. According to la Repubblica, his absence comes after a brief stint in hospital.
Seb Hines and Giles Barnes have transformed the fortunes of Orlando Pride
To followers of women’s football in the US, they are the English coaching duo who have delivered unprecedented success to a previously trophyless club. To English football fans with particularly sharp memories, they are the former Middlesbrough and Derby youngsters who left to play in the MLS. To each other, Seb Hines and Giles Barnes are just old mates, stretching back to their days sharing a room on England youth international camps.
“It brings an unwavering trust. We can challenge each other and there’s no ill intent behind it,” is how Barnes sums up the benefits of a head coach and his assistant being longtime friends. Yet the unlikely chain of events that led to their reunion in Florida is almost as improbable as Orlando Pride leaping from 10th place to the title in two years.
The attacks on lawmakers and a US senator’s callous reaction tell a dark tale of modern America
In the early morning of 14 June, according to authorities, Vance Luther Boelter, disguised as a police officer and wearing body armor and a face mask, drove his black Ford Explorer SUV, equipped with flashing lights, to the home of the Minnesota state senator John Hoffman. There, he shot Hoffman nine times, critically wounding him, and shot his wife eight times as, relatives say, she threw her body over her daughter to shield her. He next drove to the home of the former house speaker Melissa Hortman, forced his way in, and killed her and her husband, officials say.
The police arrived and Boelter fled, abandoning his car. In it they allegedly discovered a “kill list” of dozens of federal and state Democratic officials, mostly from Minnesota but also prominent Democrats in other midwestern states, and the sites of women’s healthcare centers and Planned Parenthood donors. He left behind notebooks with detailed descriptions of his target locations. On the lam, Boelter sent a text message to his family: “Dad went to war last night.”
Trump’s $499 gold phone is only the latest ask of the Maga faithful to show their commitment in dollar terms
“I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”
Those were Donald Trump’s words to writer Tony Schwartz in the Art of the Deal. In his second term, Trump has been thinking big about making money. Since his reelection campaign began, Trump is estimated to have more than doubled his net worth to $5.4bn.
Monaco have shortlisted André Onana as a potential signing this summer but the goalkeeper is intent on staying at Manchester United and proving his worth to Ruben Amorim next season.
The Ligue 1 club are admirers of the 29-year-old and are also thought to be monitoring Chelsea’s Djordje Petrovićc. Onana, however, is keen to remain at United despite his patchy form at the club.
When the extent of the university’s involvement with slavery was unearthed, a scholar tracking descendants of enslaved workers was suddenly fired
Jordan Lloyd had been praying for something big to happen. The 35-year-old screenwriter was quarantining in her apartment in North Hollywood in June 2020. Without any work projects to fill her days, she picked up the novel Roots, by Alex Haley, to reread.
The novel tells the story of Kunta Kinte, Haley’s ancestor, who is captured and sold into slavery in the Gambia and then brought to Virginia, where he is forced to labor on a plantation. It was adapted into an Emmy-award winning television series in the 1970s, and while reading it again, Lloyd thought to herself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they could make another Roots?”
David Litt’s new book It’s Only Drowning centres on an improbable friendship and how shared experience provides a neutral ground for connection
What do men want? Democrats need to know after their election drubbing by Donald Trump and the “manosphere” last year. They have responded by commissioning “Speaking with American Men”, a strategic plan that will study “the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality” in online spaces.
News of the two-year $20m project reinforced critics’ view that Democrats have become the party of an aloof, college-educated liberal elite whose pursuit of working class men resembles a Victorian explorer wielding a butterfly net. Which makes the publication of David Litt’s book, It’s Only Drowning, a timely contribution to Democrats’ ongoing post-mortem.
She made her name with rage-fuelled anthems – and sold 75m records in the process. Now, with a highly anticipated Glastonbury slot, the California-dwelling earth mother is ready to let rip again …
Alanis Morissette asks which version of herI wish to hear from: “The hormonal bitch who has a lot to say? The people-pleasing, kind, amenable part? They’re all here.” It’s 9am in sunny Los Angeles and the Canadian-born singer-songwriter is wearing a slouchy top, her wavy hair loose. She’s long been aware of these different“parts”, that her life is full of contradiction. “I have 14 different opinions about one thing.” It’s why, aged 19, she wrote Hand In My Pocket (lyrics include: I’m high, but I’m grounded / I’m sane, but I’m overwhelmed), one of several anthems on Jagged Little Pill, the album released 30 years ago this month. Back then, in the unenlightened 90s, people found this sort of talk unnerving. “They were like, ‘Whoa, that’s scary. What are you talking about?’”
“They called it my ‘psychobabble’. I’m like, ‘I’m going to stay the course with my psychobabble.’” It’s what she sees as her “karmic assignment” and feels not a little vindicated now that these ideas are welcomed by the mainstream. There’s a whole seam of psychotherapy that views the mind as composed of distinct “parts”, called Internal Family Systems. Morissette speaks at the symposiums, as well as summits on trauma, or wholeness verses wellness, career, art and feminism. She hosted a podcast devoted to this stuff. “The healing arts,” she says, adding drily: “I am from California, never forget that. California, because if I were in any other state my head might explode.”
Zadie Smith For me summer reading is about immersion. Three novels fully absorbed me recently. Flesh by David Szalay is a very smart and stylish novel about the 1%, filtered through the life of a Hungarian bodyguard/driver in their midst. Cécé by Emmelie Prophète (out 23 September) vividly depicts the slums of contemporary Haiti via a very online young sex worker who lives her best life on Facebook. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie features a series of unforgettable women trying to work out what love means. The summer read I’m looking forward to myself is Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, a true original.
David Nicholls I would recommend two books, 800 pages and a shade under 150, depending on what you can carry. Helen Garner’s collected diaries, How to End a Story, are frank, gripping and revealing about family, marriage and the writing life, while Anthony Shapland’s debut, A Room Above a Shop, is a small, tender love story, almost a poem.
89th over: India 368-3 (Gill 132, Pant 69) India still have a fair bit of batting to come: Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur. England would love to gain access to Nair, playing his first Test in eight years, while the ball is new. Gill will be aware of that – he is batting in his bubble, playing every ball on its merits, which in this case means a maiden from Woakes.
“Good morning,” writes John Starbuck. “Another puzzle, neurologically speaking, is why so many Test players go for a double-digit choice as their playing number. It must have begun with Joe Root 66, understandably a mild pun, but it looks like there’s a superstition going around. In the system used by some sides, each player has a number according to their debut, counting from the very beginning of Tests, so why not use that? I suppose they feel that anything which boosts confidence gives you an edge and there’s not much to be done about it. Confirm?”
Islamabad says US president helped resolve India conflict but critic says ‘Israel’s sugar daddy in Gaza’ not candidate for any prize
Pakistan has said it will recommend Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.
Paying theatregoers have bemoaned watching Don’t Cry For Me Argentina on livestream while passersby experience it live for free. But is it a seven-minute stunt worth waiting for?
Move over Romeo: theatre’s second most famous balcony scene has stolen the show.
Every night this week Rachel Zegler has emerged halfway through Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita at the London Palladium to sing its biggest number to the Oxford Circus crowds. Last weekend the Hollywood ingenue was serenading surprised shoppers, but since her performance of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina went viral it’s become the hottest (free) ticket in the West End.
This image captures the passion and solemnity of an Islamic ritual in Iran
For Meysam Hamrang, this image was years in the making. The Iranian photographer took it in 2019 at a religious ceremony in the village of Masuleh, part of a historic city in the northern province of Gilan, Iran.
“On the sixth day of Muharram – the first month of the Islamic calendar – Shia Muslims mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in a ritual called Alam Bandan,” says Hamrang. “It’s held in a 1,200-year-old shrine. People from surrounding villages gather to participate in, or observe, the ritual.”
People locators, 3D weapon blueprints, tactical planning – all accessible on the web for potential attackers or terrorists
A rash of recent assassinations have brought on congressional scrutiny and concern among law enforcement agencies who are wary of an age of political polarization turning deadly.
But experts say the violence is as much a byproduct of the times as it is the easy accessibility to DIY murder tradecraft, evident in some high-profile slayings of late.
You don’t have to be a fan of Tucker Carlson to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican civil war
You have to admit that there’s something delicious about watching Ted Cruz get served his just deserts by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a nearly two-hour long interview on Carlson’s own channel and in Cruz’s Washington office, Carlson repeatedly grilled, roasted, and fried the Texas senator, exposing a deepening rift within the Maga movement and showing us the hollowness of our so-called leaders along the way.
You don’t have to be a fan of Carlson to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican civil war. Carlson, who once hosted a show on CNN, established his reputation on Fox News and then became “a racist demagogue and promoter of far-right disinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories”, as a 2023 profile in Mother Jones described him. While at Fox, he was for a time the highest rated personality on cable TV and was deeply influential in setting the conservative agenda. On air at Fox – and in this essay for Politico – he praised Trump. Off-air, he was texting his colleagues a different opinion: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait,” he wrote, adding: “I hate him passionately.”
Wembley Stadium, London Amid exercise videos, confetti cannons and guest star Jamiroquai, Lipa maintains an old-school superstar steeliness as she works up a sweat in the summer heat
Call it temperature-induced delirium, but when Dua Lipa kicks off her first stadium headline show the crowd is strangely mute. As slow-motion images of crashing waves appear on the screens, augmented by a sound bath-esque drone, the effect it has on the sweltering cauldron in north-west London is close to trance-like. When Lipa finally pops up, standing statuesque at the top of an infinity symbol-shaped stage and resplendent in a white crystal leotard, everyone quickly surrenders to the heat.
It’s a white-hot start, too. Despite relatively lacklustre sales of her third album, last year’s Radical Optimism, its second single, Training Season, whips up an early frenzy as 12 dancers spread themselves across the stage, a stomping Lipa inspecting them like a drill sergeant. By the time her house-y Calvin Harris collaboration, One Kiss, arrives, there’s a danger of peaking too soon.
Internet users have been told to change their passwords and upgrade their digital security after researchers claimed to have revealed the scale of sensitive information – 16bn login records – potentially available to cybercriminals.
Researchers at Cybernews, an online tech publication, said they had found 30 datasets stuffed with credentials harvested from malicious software known as “infostealers” and leaks.
Series of allegations facing those around the PM have hit the reputation of the socialist-led minority government
Pedro Sánchez could be forgiven for remembering the autumn of 2018 with a deep and nostalgic sigh. Back then, having been in office for just six months, Spain’s socialist prime minister could afford to mock his opponents’ frequently hyperbolic attempts to depict him and his administration as an existential threat to the country.
“I know you think I’m a dangerous, extreme leftwinger who’s trying to break Spain apart,” he told the senate at the end of October that year. “I know that everything I do, and everything my government does, is illegal, immoral and even fattening.”
The former Vanity Fair editor on Hermès hankies, his daily 11am cigarette, and the ‘ugly lunacy’ of the Trump administration
Born in Canada, Graydon Carter, 75, moved to New York in 1978. He became a staff writer on Time magazine, followed by Life in 1983; in 1986, he co-founded the satirical publication Spy. He edited the New York Observer for a year before becoming editor of Vanity Fair in 1992; he retired in 2017. His memoir, When the Going Was Good, is out now. He lives in New York City with his third wife and has five children.
When were you happiest?
My first week in New York in 1978, when I was about to start as a writer at Time. And my first week in the south of France after retiring from my job of 25 years as editor of Vanity Fair.
The evidence against the Drax power station is damning, yet the government wants to continue its massive public funding
How green is this? We pay billions of pounds to cut down ancient forests in the US and Canada, ship the wood across the Atlantic in diesel tankers, then burn it in a Yorkshire-based power station.
Welcome to the scandal of Drax, where Britain’s biggest polluter gets to play climate hero. The reality is that billions in public subsidies has enabled Drax to generate electricity by burning 300m trees. Now the government is trying to force through an extension that would grant Drax an estimated £1.8bn in public subsidies on top of the £11bn it has already pocketed, keeping this circus going until at least 2031.
Dale Vince is a green energy industrialist and campaigner
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A deep crimson vegan version of the classic Persian dip featuring coconut instead of the yoghurt, and a bean medley spiked with an aromatic spiced oil
This fava bean dip is rich and luxurious, but made using quite humble ingredients. The broad beans on top make a perfect garnish, because they are, in essence, fresh fava beans, while the vadouvan seasoning, although untraditional, has the same sweet, warm and earthy flavours as the fava. Then, a take on a vegan borani, enriched with coconut cream instead of the more usual yoghurt. It hits the spot with its tang, heat and sweetness, with an intense beetroot flavour from the salt-baking and a generous dollop of pomegranate molasses to add punch.
Vessel to be transported to port where investigators will try to find cause of fatal sinking during storm
Salvage teams in Sicily say they have lifted Mike Lynch’s superyacht “fully and finally out of the water” for the first time since it sank last year during a storm, killing seven people including the tech tycoon and his teenage daughter.
The rusting hulk of the Bayesian, which ran into trouble off the coast of the Italian island in August last year, has been slowly raised from the seabed over the last three days. Covered with algae and mud, it was visible clear of the sea in the holding area of a yellow floating crane barge, a witness told the Associated Press.
Dream Countby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A rich exploration of female experience, Adichie’s first novel in 10 years charts the lives and loves of four women in Nigeria and the US, from a “dream count” of ex-boyfriends to a section inspired by Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape of a Guinean hotel worker in 2011. Magisterial, wide-ranging and delicately done.
Those delivering paternalistic lectures to Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae and Sydney Sweeney would do well to revisit recent history
Sabrina Carpenter was accused of dragging women back into an unenlightened past last week, as the controversial cover for her new album was met with (apparently) feminist furore. It’s ironic, then, that the past is precisely where Carpenter’s most outspoken critics could do with looking. It’s clear that the general consensus is lurching grimly to the right when it comes to gender, and a new generation of young, female critics should be wary of falling into step. The debate about how we look at women, and what they want, risks limply missing the point.
In the past few weeks, Sydney Sweeney has been chastised for selling sexy soap, and Addison Rae scolded for dancing in her underwear on stage. It’s odd that the backlash has been so immense, given the celebration of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl film just a few months ago. The SheEO Nicole Kidman slurping milk out of a saucer? Hot. Sweeney’s dirty bathwater? Degrading and vapid. Seemingly, Kidman’s age made the former radically feminist, and by extension, permissible in the eyes of the kink police.
It has been an ominous week for the sport in the US but talk of a boycott of next year’s World Cup misses the point
Should we give it a miss? Is it best to stay away from next summer’s Trump-Infantino US World Cup? Depending on your politics the answer may be a resounding no or a bemused shrug. Some will see pure drive-by entertainment. Why would anyone want to boycott a month-long end-of-days Grand Soccer Parade staged by two of the world’s most cinematic egomaniacs?
But it is a question that has been asked, and will be asked a lot more in the next year. Those who intend to travel will need to answer it by action or omission. Would it be better for dissenting media and discomfited football fans to simply no-platform this event?
Uefa’s legal team is preparing for more action as a complex and increasingly common issue rears its head again
In the waterfront offices of Uefa’s House of European Football headquarters in Nyon, the legal team are preparing for an unwanted trip around Lake Geneva to Lausanne. Over the course of many internal meetings since Crystal Palace inadvertently provided Uefa with the toughest test yet of its multi-club ownership (MCO) rules by winning the FA Cup, it has become increasingly clear the ultimate arbiter on the issue is likely to be the court of arbitration for sport (Cas).
“We’re going to find out if our MCO rules stand up to scrutiny as, one way or another, it looks like we’re going to Cas,” says one source at Uefa, resigned to the issue of whether Palace can compete in next season’s Europa League being placed in the hands of that Lausanne court.
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