Our regular reader will be well aware we always have the first betting heat, a fashion one, before the raccing gets underway. What colour will Camilla’s hat be?
Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.
But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.
I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.
And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.
I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.
Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.
When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.
So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.
The director of Jodie Comer’s tour de force is now staging Inter Alia, another legal drama by Suzie Miller. He talks about steering Stranger Things: The First Shadow, resisting the classics and his double act with Stephen Daldry
Earlier this year, opposing theatres in Charing Cross Road displayed “sold out” signs for their shows. Both of them – Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Kyoto – were co-directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin. “It was surreal,” says Martin. “Someone sent me a photo and I thought: I’m keeping that. As a little Australian, I’m still surprised to make a living out of this crazy career.”
Kyoto had a limited run but Stranger Things has been going for 18 months and has “the noisiest audience I’ve ever heard”, Martin reports. “I think the stat is that 60% of [them] have never been to a play before. So they eat popcorn throughout and just respond in a really natural way. If it’s boring, they leave. If they’re frightened, they really scream and gasp. It’s very live but, if you’re used to traditional theatre, it’s weird.”
Sabalenka says she did not intend to attack opponent
Aryna Sabalenka says she has written to Coco Gauff to apologize for the “unprofessional” comments she made after her loss to the American in the final of the French Open.
Speaking to Eurosport Germany, Sabalenka said her remarks after her defeat to Gauff at Roland-Garros this month were a mistake. In her post-match press conference in Paris, Sabalenka had suggested that the result was more due to her own errors than to Gauff’s performance.
This year’s edition to be last held in country after Belgrade withholds funding over support of anti-corruption activists
One of Europe’s largest music festivals will no longer be held in Serbia and could go “into exile” in Germany or a neighbouring Balkan state after Belgrade withheld funding over its support of the country’s anti-corruption student protesters.
Exit festival, which is held every July in a medieval bastion fortress in Serbia’s second city, Novi Sad, was founded in 2000 by student activists from the protest movement that helped topple Slobodan Milošević. Affordable ticket prices and starry lineups mean it has acquired a reputation as Europe’s premier music event with a social conscience, with 210,000 people from more than 80 countries attending in 2024.
Give it a squish to remove the moisture, then hard-fry in a robust coating – these are among the solutions our expert culinary panel suggests to achieving addictively crisp tofu
I want to like tofu, but I don’t because of its rubbery texture. How do I make it nice and crisp?
Anne, by email
“Moisture is the enemy of crisp tofu,” says Emma Chung, author of Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make, so the quest for cubes of bean curd that are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside starts by getting rid of as much excess water as possible (and choosing a tofu labelled “firm” or “extra-firm” in the first place). “I usually do this by wrapping the tofu in tea towels, placing it between two large plates and putting a heavy pot or pan on top,” Chung says. After 10 minutes, you “should have a nice and firm tofu that will have a lovely texture, and it will be a lot easier to crisp up”.
Guardian columnist Ravinder Bhogal, meanwhile, pops her tofu on a wire rack set over a tray and covers it with kitchen paper or a clean cloth: “Put a weight on top and leave it for a couple of hours, and ideally overnight – that will squeeze out the excess moisture.” She then pats the tofu dry and coats it in corn, rice or potato flour before frying (or putting in an air fryer) for an “off-the-Richter crunch”. Chung is simpatico, coating her tofu pieces in a thin layer of cornflour to create a crust that “turns extra crisp when fried or baked”. Simply put the cubed tofu in a bowl, cover “generously” with cornflour and give everything a good toss. “If you’re using slices of tofu, dip them in a shallow plate of cornflour to make sure they’re evenly coated.”
Donald Trump has said he is not seeking a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Iran but instead wants to see “a real end” to Iran’s nuclear programme, with Tehran abandoning it “entirely”.
The US president predicted Israel would not let up in its bombing campaign and suggested a decisive moment in that campaign was imminent, though he made clear he expected Israel to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without US help.
Sebastian Bond named as publisher of site known as trolls’ paradise, which was ordered to pay out to couple in 2023
The previously anonymous operator of an online gossip forum described as a trolls’ paradise has been unmasked after losing a defamation case.
Sebastian Bond, also known as Bastian Durward, has been confirmed as the man behind Tattle Life after an Irish couple successfully sued the publisher, according to reports.
‘Spectacular’ discovery at site of about 30 graves includes pearls, coins, ceramics and a box containing gold thread
A 10th-century burial site believed to have belonged to a Viking noble family has been discovered in northern Denmark, packed with a “spectacular” trove of ancient objects, a museum has said.
The discovery came almost by chance when pearls, coins, ceramics and a box containing a gold thread were unearthed during construction work near Lisbjerg, a village located 4 miles (7km) north of Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city.
After courtship with crypto industry, president now profits immensely from a sector he once said ‘seems like a scam’
Cryptocurrency multibillionaire Justin Sun could barely contain his glee.
Last month, Sun publicly flaunted a $100,000 Donald Trump-branded watch that he was awarded at a private dinner at Trump’s Virginia golf club. Sun had earned the recognition for buying $20m dollars of the crypto memecoin $Trump, ranking him first among 220 purchasers of the token who received dinner invitations.
Patients in real world shed less weight than in clinical settings and may benefit more from bariatric surgery
People using weight loss jabs shed far fewer pounds in the real world than in clinical trials, researchers have found.
Jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, which contain the drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide respectively, have transformed the treatment of obesity, with studies suggesting the former can help people lose up to 20% of their body weight after 72 weeks of treatment.
The response to these online fundraisers signals the rise of more overt, public support for racist actions
Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman based in Rochester, Minnesota, went viral after admitting in a video that she called a 5-year-old Black child the N-word while at a local park on 28 April.
Though Hendrix was met with widespread condemnation and denouncement after the incident, she also raised over $750,000 on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, commonly used by extremists to fundraise for far-right causes. Many contributors to Hendrix’s campaign, which was created to “protect [Hendrix’s] family” after backlash, used racial slurs and Nazi symbols in their donation names. As of 1 June, over 30,000 people had donated to Hendrix’s fundraiser. The support and funding Hendrix received for her racist actions raised alarm bells for many, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which flagged the fundraiser as being used to “spread hateful talking points and legitimize their ideas”. Experts say the response to her campaign signals the rise of more overt, public support for racist actions, versus their condemnation.
As regulator prepares to approve lenacapavir in the US, campaigners are urging the manufacturer, Gilead, to make it ‘available and affordable for all who need it’
A drug with the potential to “end the HIV pandemic” will launch in the US this week – as a new study reveals it could be sold for 1,000 times less than its possible price tag.
Lenacapavir, given as a twice-yearly injection, can prevent someone from being infected with HIV, according to clinical trial results.
This provocative documentary about the hugely controversial Toronto politician is a chaotic watch – and features tactics that would go on to serve Trump
I am surprised at how often 2013 feels like a lifetime ago, in political terms at least. That was the year the late Rob Ford, then mayor of Toronto, was reported to have been filmed smoking crack cocaine. He denied it, twisting the allegations into what he suggested was a smear campaign by an untrustworthy, left-leaning mainstream media. A few months later, the city’s chief of police, Bill Blair, held a press conference in which he announced that the police had the video in question, and it showed Ford smoking a glass pipe. The mayor was defiant. “I have no reason to resign,” he said. He didn’t.
Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem manages to squash the chaos of Ford’s many scandals into an appropriately hectic 49 minutes of documentary. (The fact that the police reporting the existence of a crack pipe video is only one of these scandals is telling: a reporter here vividly likens the number of controversies surrounding Ford to “sweat off a runner”.) It provides a brief account of his entry into politics, and viewers with an interest in the psyche of “controversial” politicians will be amazed and astonished to learn that, like Donald Trump, Ford was probably motivated by wanting to impress his tough millionaire businessman father, who had been a bellicose politician himself.
Rachel Reeves is considering caving in to City lobbying and softening changes to inheritance tax that affect wealthy individuals who would previously have been “non-doms”, reports suggest.
In her autumn budget, the chancellor confirmed that she would scrap the non-dom tax status, which allowed wealthy individuals with connections abroad to avoid paying full UK tax on their overseas earnings.
Social movements have long included some form of direct conflict with authorities. The key is whom the public blames for clashes
On 6 June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) conducted aggressive raids in Los Angeles, sweeping up gainfully employed workers with no criminal record. This led to demonstrations outside the Los Angeles federal building. During these protests, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California, was arrested alongside more than 100 others – leading to even larger demonstrations the next day.
Donald Trump responded on 7 June by sending federal troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests without consulting Governor Gavin Newsom and, in fact, in defiance of Newsom’s wishes. This dramatic federal response, paired with increasingly aggressive tactics by local police, led to the protests growing larger and escalating in their intensity. They’ve begun spreading to other major cities, too.
Scores of Christian men have been raised on ideas of abstinence and ‘purity’ – what does that mean for their sex lives later on?
Like many people, reaching the age of 40 inspired Matt to do some self-reflection. He had achieved many hallmarks of adulthood: a college degree, a career he enjoyed, and two beloved dogs. But he’d never had a relationship, or even a sexual partner.
This weighed heavy on him; he craved the experience of a deep romantic connection and wondered how it might feel to be in love.
A buff, bloodthirsty mouse-man terrorises Mexican teens in the latest horror schlock made from newly expired copyright
It seems “public domain horror movies” are now a proper thing: a cinematic subgenre of gory, uber-schlocky fearmongering that revolves around a well-known intellectual property, usually from the realm of children’s entertainment, whose copyright has expired. That means the makers are free to turn a beloved character into a murderous man-beast psychopath, with the Winnie-the-Pooh derived Blood and Honey franchise a prime example.
Meanwhile, the moment black-and-white cartoon Steamboat Willie, the 1928 debut of Mickey Mouse, entered the public domain, almost half a dozen Mickey-themed slasher pics were born, like spores released from a fruiting body. In a very low-bar environment, I Heart Willie is perhaps a tick better than previous public domain horrors, or maybe we have reached the film critic’s equivalent of Stockholm syndrome, with our defences worn down by shoddy production values, originality deficits and lame performances.
Six killed and hundreds injured in weeks of unrest, as supporters demand former president be allowed to run
Fatal clashes between police and supporters of former president Evo Morales have deepened Bolivia’s political and economic crisis, heightening tensions in the Andean country just two months before the presidential election.
Six people have been killed and more than 300 injured in weeks of unrest. The dead include four police officers, one of whom was reportedly killed by dynamite which had been strapped to his body.
As someone who is consistently the worst person on a team, I can impart some advice. And the first is do not harangue your host or the other teams under any circumstances
I am always considered likely to be a quiz asset, because I’m old, and yet I’m a huge quiz deficit – not only usually wrong, but with such confident delivery that I make others in the team, who are right, lose their way, like a magnet on a compass. After another stunning defeat, in which we slipped from a mediocre seventh or eighth back to last place, having had 20 points deducted because I poked the quiz guy with a pencil, I’m ready to pass on some basic quizdom.
First, don’t poke the quiz guy with a pencil. Don’t harangue the marking team or try to cut a deal. In fact, keep all extra-team interactions at zero. Forget the captain, forget the person with the best handwriting, choose your most emollient member and make them do the talking for all of you.
Russia launched a sustained missile and drone attack on Kyiv in the early hours of Tuesday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 55 in what the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called “one of the most horrific attacks” on the Ukrainian capital since the full-scale war began in spring 2022.
The toll seemed likely to rise as several sites across the capital were hit. At a nine-storey Soviet-era apartment block in the west of Kyiv, an apparent direct missile hit had led to part of the building collapsing, leaving a gaping hole and a pile of rubble in the middle of the block.
If it’s a long holiday, or just for an evening, make sure everything inside and out is secure
Whether it is a fortnight’s holiday, a weekend away or just an evening out, if you are planning a trip during the summer months you should take steps to secure your home against burglaries.
They’ve broken crowdsurfing records – 901 in a single gig – but their music confronts deep, difficult subjects from mental health to toxic family members
Malevolence insist they aren’t psychic. In late February 2020, days before Covid-19 lockdowns started being implemented around the world, the Yorkshire metalcore band released their breakthrough single, Keep Your Distance. It was a melee of growls and beatdowns that propelled them to new heights – in part thanks to a title that foresaw the next year of government messaging.
“It was completely by coincidence,” guitarist and vocalist Konan Hall tells me on a video call from his home in Sheffield. “But everyone started tagging us in signs saying ‘Keep your distance because of Covid’.” Lead singer Alex Taylor can’t help but laugh, joining the call from his place just up the road. “It was free marketing!”
Men finished 15th and women were 16 points off top
Manchester United’s chief executive, Omar Berrada, remains confident the club can win the men’s and women’s league titles by their 150th anniversary in 2028. Berrada, who told staff of his “Project 150” vision last September, knows that represents a significant challenge with the men having just endured a worst top-flight season since relegation in 1973-74 and Chelsea continuing to dominate the Women’s Super League.
He believes marking a major milestone in the club’s history since it was founded as Newton Heath in 1878 with double title success is realistic. In the United We Stand fanzine to be published on Wednesday, Berrada said: “It’s establishing a series of targets within a timeframe so we can focus our efforts and energy on that goal.
Responding to a fan question, the singer said he felt the words were ‘unnecessarily provocative’ but called Morrissey ‘probably the best lyricist of his generation’
Nick Cave has said that he turned down Morrissey’s request to appear on a new song in 2024, claiming that the former Smiths frontman wanted him to sing “an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written”.
In response to a fan question on his Red Hand Files site about his relationship with the singer, Cave said that “although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn’t my thing. I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve.”
At least 51 Palestinians have been killed and more than 200 wounded while waiting for UN and commercial trucks to enter the territory with desperately needed food, according to Gaza’s health ministry and a local hospital.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces carried out an airstrike on a nearby home before opening fire toward the crowd in the southern city of Khan Younis on Tuesday morning. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The primary justifications for early immigration laws were xenophobia, eugenics, and overt racism. Understanding the history of immigration is essential
The US immigration system is a scam that dehumanizes people for profit. Communities across the country have had enough.
The protests in Los Angeles have invited a long overdue conversation about the true nature of the US immigration system. While the immediate catalysts for the protests were ramped up Ice raids attempting to meet Donald Trump’s arbitrary deportation quotas, the protests spring from a deeper history.
With fights hidden behind paywalls and few stars breaking through, the once-popular sport risks irrelevance among the young fans it desperately needs to survive
Boxing is popular with young people in countries like the United Kingdom and Mexico. But it doesn’t resonate with young sports fans in the United States the way it once did.
Fans of a sport – particularly, team sports - develop lifelong allegiances at an early age and often pass it on to their children. There was a time when fathers and sons in America sat down in front of a television set together and watched Gillette Friday Night Fightsor boxing on weekend afternoons. Now, if they sit down together at all, they watch football.
Terry Moran was effectively dismissed from the network after calling Stephen Miller and Trump ‘world-class’ haters
A journalist who lost his job at ABC News after describing top White House aide Stephen Miller as someone “richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” has said he published that remark on social media because he felt it was “true”.
“It was something that was in my heart and mind,” the network’s former senior national correspondent Terry Moran said Monday on The Bulwark political podcast. “And I would say I used very strong language deliberately.”
Though famously resilient, aloes are also sensitive to overwatering
What’s the problem?
I thought it was nearly impossible to kill aloe plants, but mine looks very pale and limp.
Diagnosis
You’re right; aloe vera is famously resilient and seen as an easy plant to care for. But all plants are living entities with specific care needs. Pale, floppy leaves usually indicate overwatering, inadequate sunlight, or poor drainage, which all cause the same problem: too much moisture in the soil. Aloe plants store water in their thick leaves, so any excess easily causes root rot and weak growth.
Photographer Misan Harriman gave lessons and equipment to young people who have fled Gaza – and the pictures they took are funny, revealing and often heartbreaking
A boy pulling a funny face, a sleeping pet, a grandfather in his chair – all ordinary scenes from life that many of us would take for granted. What makes these images special is they were taken by Palestinian children, refugees displaced to Egypt since Israel’s war in Gaza, making sense of their new, if hopefully temporary, home and what they have escaped from.
“It’s familial life, relationships, and although they’ve seen so much, you’re not seeing trauma, you’re not seeing the faces of people that have given up,” says the photographer Misan Harriman, an ambassador for Save the Children. “Even though none of these kids know what the future brings and there’s huge uncertainty, they are living in the moment. They’re doing their best to thrive and learn.” The camera, he adds, is “a seemingly inanimate object that can help you find answers to a world that is confusing, and even more confusing for some of these children.”
Misan Harriman, centre, with some of the children involved in the project. Photograph: Anna Sass/Save the Children
Originally meant to release in 2022, Capcom’s futuristic game – featuring an astronaut and a mysterious blond-haired little girl – has just re-emerged from stasis; and it looks like it will be worth the wait
When Pragmata was first announced five years ago, it wasn’t clear exactly what Resident Evil publisher Capcom was making. The debut trailer featured eerie, futuristic imagery, an astronaut, and a blond-haired little girl, but there was nothing concrete or clear about its content. And when it missed its 2022 release window and was “paused indefinitely” in 2023, it wasn’t clear if Pragmata would ever come to be.
That all changed on 4 June, when a brand-new trailer was broadcast during a PlayStation showcase. The blond-haired little girl turns out to be a weaponised android, accompanying an astronaut called Hugh (of course) through space-station shootouts. I played about 20 minutes of the game during Summer Game Fest the following weekend. A lengthy, troubled development cycle is usually a bad omen, but my time with it was promising.
Pragmata will be out in 2026 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
British player talks about receiving toxic messages
‘I don’t think there’s anything off the cards now’
The British tennis No 2 Katie Boulter has lifted the lid on the level of abuse aimed at some players and revealed she and her family have received death threats.
Boulter shared her experiences with BBC Sport to highlight the issue of players receiving toxic messages online. The 28-year-old’s examples included a message telling her to buy “candles and a coffin for your entire family” with a reference to her “grandmother’s grave if she’s not dead by tomorrow”, one stating she should “go to hell” as she had cost the poster money, and another stating “hope you get cancer”.
Real Madrid are the biggest successful side in Europe but that doesn’t mean they are too big for a bargain. David Alaba, Kylian Mbappé, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Tony Rüdiger and Steve McManaman have all moved to the Bernabéu on a free transfer and the Spanish giants are reportedly targeting another soon-to-be out-of-contract star. Myles Lewis-Skelly had a breakthrough year at Arsenal this past season but with his deal expiring next summer he would be free to talk to foreign clubs in January. The Gunners are said to be “relaxed”, but this would not be the first time they have been gazumped by a Spanish rival.
Another elite full-back but at the tail end of his career, Kyle Walker, is garnering interest from Everton after being left out of Manchester City’s Club World Cup squad. José Mourinho and Fenerbahce have already submitted an offer for the 34-year-old but the opportunity to stay in the Premier League could sway the England international to stay in the north-west of England. Any transfer fee would be nominal, with one year left on his deal at City, but Everton would still have to match his substantial wages. Fulham are also said to be interested.
Sharp edges of bitter history keep jutting through Wes Anderson’s whimsical intrigues that turn international tragedy into light comedy
The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson’s makebelieve treatment of the war-ravaged near east, reimagines the region as a sunlit Levantine fantasia of cypress trees, fez hats, camel-riders and kitsch hotels, all photographed with the lustre of an Ottolenghi cookbook. Meanwhile, livestreamed daily to our news feeds, the warlords of the Holy Land exhibit for us an equally spectacular dystopia of cities pummelled into sawdust, of skies scarred with scorching white phosphorus and gun-toting paragliders.
How could these images be of the same place? What does it mean that they have been produced at the same time, and that we are consuming them alongside each other?
In this page-turning romance, teenage sweethearts reunite as thirtysomething women
Sex is notoriously difficult to write. Some authors avoid it entirely; even those who have been called great can come a cropper. Which is why I want to start this review by saying that the sex scenes in Ordinary Love are some of the best I have read this year, and that Marie Rutkoski has a facility for writing physical intimacy that can elude even some of our most gifted authors. Her voice has been compared to that of Sally Rooney. I don’t see much of that in this novel beyond a Rooneyesque ability to write sex well, but that is a talent worth noting.
Ordinary Love is a queer romance that tells the story of Emily and Gen, teenage sweethearts who break up in college and reunite in their 30s, their paths having diverged dramatically. Emily marries Jack, who is wealthy and emotionally abusive. When she sees Gen again, she is in the process of leaving him for the second time (the novel opens with a scene vividly depicting the dealbreaker: it is violence against a child that finally does it). Gen, meanwhile, has become an Olympic athlete and serial womaniser. Both are carrying the wounds of their adolescent relationship, which is recounted in flashback, and the homophobia they faced, particularly from Emily’s father. In one particularly moving scene, Gen’s grandmother – who raised her after her mother died from opioid addiction – counters his bigotry by making a toast: “To my granddaughter. I love you. I love everything about you. I am so proud.”
Connexion
