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“人们一生都在低估我。如果你告诉我我不能做某事，我会拼命地去完成它。”重新出任住房部长的安杰拉·雷纳 (Angela Rayner) 正如此决绝地坚持 2024 年工党竞选宣言中设定的雄心勃勃的目标，即在“下一个议会期间”（将于 2029 年结束）建造 1.5 百万套新住房。
公平地说，建筑工地的进度落后于计划，到目前为止净新增住房仅约 400,000 套。如果雷纳女士真如她所言，在这种逆向心理的刺激下能表现出色，那么每当她在公开场合出现——甚至是在招待朋友时——全国人民都应该一致告诉她，她永远无法达成目标。这可能恰恰是她所需的动力。
如果让住宅建筑业和国家所有相关部门迎接挑战仅仅是意志力的问题——也就是雷纳女士那不屈不挠的精神——那么一切或许都会好转。但情况显然出了问题。正如她自己承认的那样，这样一个项目是长期的：“房子不可能在五分钟内盖好。我也希望如此，但这是需要时间的。”
成功的障碍就像一车轻质混凝土砌块一样显而易见。原材料经历了与其他商品相同的通货膨胀；应对挑战所需的所有行业都面临技能短缺；而国际局势的动荡和税收增加打击了消费者和企业的信心。实际收入增长缓慢损害了购房能力。
作为一个关键因素，抵押贷款利率由于伊朗战争而维持在比预期更高的水平。与此同时，工党放宽规划限制以及雇佣更多规划官员的举措，似乎尚未充分激励地方政府清除积压工作并正视邻避主义 (Nimbyism)。
此外，工党的计划首先是由私营部门在政府创造好条件（包括对社会住宅的一些选择性补贴）后负责交付的。换句话说，这不仅仅关乎“负担得起”的公寓；那些带有六个卧室、双车库加实用房的伪都铎式高管住宅同样计入目标，且通常利润更高。即便在理论上，成功也从未直接掌握在部长们手中。
此时，一位新首相从 No 10, 唐宁街 (英国首相府) 的正门进入，他倾向于采取直接行动，并坚信国家应控制并提供“生活必需品”。他想要市政房屋 (Council housing)——由地方当局拥有和控制，并以公平（即低于市场）的租金出租。
这将是一场小规模的革命——但一如既往地，在他有时提到的宏伟愿景之外，目前还没有具体的细节。私营部门将被邀请并签约建造这些新住房，但同样地，在伯纳姆先生资金耗尽之前，他们很可能就会遇到劳动力短缺的问题。
尽管如此，工党的住房目标仍值得保留，正因为它是一个极具挑战性的目标。事实上，这是一个高尚的，即便不是绝对必需的，
使命。在这种背景下，为了给雷纳女士提供进一步支持，她拒绝租金管制是正确的。从历史上看，这会导致贫民窟的出现。问题的核心在于供应。
在经济领域中，没有哪个部门比住房业更适合让本届政府取得成功。建设更多房屋将立即促进增长，创造就业机会，增加至关重要的税收，并降低购买或租赁现代、节能房屋的成本。这反过来将减轻年轻人的极端压力，特别是当他们试图寻找自己的住所，或者仅仅是为了在有遮风挡雨的地方维持生计时。
一个拥有房产所有权的民主国家，并且拥有充足且租金可负担的社会住宅或市政房屋供应的国家，将会是一个更稳定、更繁荣的地方。正如基尔·斯塔默爵士曾提醒我们的那样，一个安全的家，无论多么简陋，都能为孩子们提供一个追求抱负的基地。
那些像雷纳女士一样在贫困家庭长大的工党部长们对此同样深有体会。现在，她又一个具体的机会可以再次证明那些质疑者是错误的。
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Athena Stavrou 政治记者
最高法院在2月份推翻了唐纳德·特朗普之前的进口税制度。 新关税是在英国已经面临的 10 per cent 临时征税到期前数小时出台的（法新社/Getty）
英国商会 (BCC) 负责人表示，在唐纳德·特朗普发起新一轮关税后，英国将支付比该集团更高的关税，这意味着英国在贸易方面失去了相对于欧盟的优势。
由于针对最高法院败诉而引入的限时征税于昨日到期，美国总统将对数十个国家征收新的关税。
然而，尽管英国和欧盟都将面临同样的 10 per cent 关税，但由于两者之间的差异，该集团支付的费用将更低。
据透露，英国必须在对所有世界贸易组织 (WTO) 成员国征收的“最惠国”关税之外，额外支付进口税。然而，欧盟的关税中已经包含了 WTO 的征税。
英国商会负责人表示，由于新关税的影响，英国失去了相对于欧盟的比较优势。William Bain 告诉 BBC：“今天早晨，商业界会对英国需要采取什么措施才能获得与欧盟相同的待遇感到担忧。”
在反思前首相基尔·斯塔默爵士与特朗普先生达成的协议时，这一揭露凸显了脱欧支持者所承诺的——即英国在欧盟之外将具有竞争优势——可能并非事实。
英国欧洲运动 (European Movement UK) 的政策顾问 Joe Meighan 表示：“英国一直吹捧的相对于欧盟的关税优势在一夜之间化为乌有。这及时提醒人们，追求来自个别贸易伙伴（尤其是美国）的优惠待遇，并不能替代成为世界最大综合市场的一部分。”
“单打独斗所获得的任何有限收益，在无缝进入欧洲单一市场的经济优势面前都显得微不足道。在全球贸易日益保护主义且经济胁迫抬头之时，团结一致才具有真正的力量。欧盟凭借集体经济力量进行谈判，这是英国单独无法企及的，而今天的关税进一步强调了为什么我们的长期繁荣在于与欧洲重建尽可能紧密的经济关系。”
工党欧洲运动主席、工党议员斯特拉·克里西补充道：“如果我们想要保护英国企业，那么我们就必须意识到，对英国而言，比唐纳德·特朗普关税的确切税率更具破坏性的事实是：当代表了我们五倍 GDP 的欧盟在决定其应对措施时，我们并不在场。正如钢铁关税风波所显示的，脱欧让我们在全球贸易战中随波逐流。如果我们想要增长和安全，我们的重启计划必须尽一切可能解决这个问题。”
苏格兰第一大臣约翰·斯威尼表示，随着昨日取消 10% 的威士忌关税，苏格兰生产商将获得“显著利益”（AFP/Getty）
一名美国贸易代表表示，这些征税是针对那些在执行禁止强迫劳动产品方面做得不够的国家。
“特朗普总统认识到，几十年的道德劝诫并未能从全球供应链中根除强迫劳动，”杰米森·格里尔大使表示。“美国实施强迫劳动进口禁令已近一个世纪，并在此基础上严格执行。我们的贸易伙伴现在也该采取同样行动了。”
“今天的行动将开始纠正这种既是侵犯人权又是扭曲贸易的行为，以改善各地工人的福利。我对那些迅速采取强迫劳动进口禁令的贸易伙伴感到鼓舞，并期待确保这些禁令得到有效执行。”
根据规则，如果对某些产品给予豁免能够鼓励其履行这一承诺，那么英国可能会获得豁免资格。
住房部初级部长莎莉·詹姆森坚称，由于威士忌等产品的某些关税已被取消，国家目前“处于更好的状态”。
“嗯，事实上我们今天的处境比昨天好，因为像威士忌和医疗技术这类产品将不再适用关税，”她告诉天空新闻（Sky News）。“而且事实上，通过与美国谈判达成的协议，英国从中获益更多。当然，英国和美国双方的官员与部长之间将继续沟通，以确保我们能获得最有利的协议。”
美国总统在国王和王后进行国事访问后，于 4 月宣布将取消威士忌关税。苏格兰第一大臣约翰·斯威尼表示，随着 10% 的关税于昨日被取消，苏格兰生产商将获得“显著利益”。
美国政府表示，此举是在美国贸易代表办公室 (USTR) 进行调查之后采取的，调查内容包括公众听证会、超过 2,100 份公众评论，以及与贸易伙伴的接触，以“解决这些长期存在的问题”。
然而，USTR 同时表示，如果关税会导致国内原材料短缺、引起全经济范围的干扰，或者相关产品无法在美国以足够数量或合理价格种植或生产，则会有产品豁免。
此外，对于来自英国及其他指定国家的产品，如果“这将鼓励这些经济体履行有关强迫劳动进口禁令的承诺，或制定并有效执行强迫劳动进口禁令”，也将给予豁免。
美国贸易代表杰米森·格里尔周四在墨西哥（路透社）
关税由进口外国产品的美国公司支付，这些公司通常会通过向消费者收取更高价格来转嫁成本。美国人已经对高昂的生活成本感到沮丧，因此政府在 11 月关键的中期选举前推出新关税是在冒险。
英国对美国的出口额高于对任何其他单一国家的出口额。2024, 年，英国对美国的出口额为 £66bn，占英国所有商品出口额的 17%。
两国去年达成的《经济繁荣协议》旨在减轻美国关税对英国工业的影响并深化商业联系。
一名政府发言人表示：“此次公告导致英国企业面临的关税税率没有变化。英国仍维持 10 per cent 的关税税率，并且我们在与美国达成的协议中获得的所有优惠准入依然有效。
“我们非常严肃地对待强迫劳动，并确保在全球供应链中，英国企业不会参与强迫劳动和侵犯人权的活动。美国已认可英国正在采取的措施，这就是为什么此次公告中没有对英国征收额外关税。”
10 per cent 关税：
阿根廷
孟加拉国
柬埔寨
加拿大
厄瓜多尔
萨尔瓦多
危地马拉
印度尼西亚
马来西亚
墨西哥
巴基斯坦
英国
10/12.5 per cent 关税：
日本
韩国
瑞士
12.5 per cent 关税：
阿尔及利亚
安哥拉
澳大利亚
巴哈马
巴林
巴西
智利
中国
哥伦比亚
哥斯达黎加
多米尼加共和国
埃及
圭亚那
洪都拉斯
香港
印度
伊拉克
以色列
约旦
哈萨克斯坦
科威特
新西兰
尼加拉瓜
尼日利亚
挪威
阿曼
秘鲁
菲律宾
卡塔尔
俄罗斯
沙特阿拉伯
新加坡
南非
韩国
斯里兰卡
泰国
特立尼达和多巴哥
土耳其
阿拉伯联合酋长国
乌拉圭
委内瑞拉
越南
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首相在职业生涯初期被迫离开西北英格兰后，称此为“圆满回归”时刻
David Lynch
这是曼彻斯特 Heron House 新岗位的首日 (PA Wire)
安迪·伯纳姆在曼彻斯特启用政府中心新总部时表示，他希望让“英国重新燃起希望”。
作为将权力移出威斯敏斯特计划的一部分，预计首相在任期内每周将前往位于曼彻斯特 Heron House 的 No 10 North 工作一次。
他在昨天上午与当地员工及部长发表讲话时，将新基地的启用描述为“我一生中最美好的一天”，并且
伯纳姆先生补充道：“全国各地的情况都一样，为了在生活中有所成就，你必须离开家乡，因为当地没有机会。这个国家一直以来都有点这样，不是吗？
“机会在全国范围内的分布并不均衡，并非所有地方都觉得他们是国家故事的一部分，而这正是本届政府将每天努力去改变的事情。
“而这正是 No 10 North 的核心意义所在：将权力下放到每一个邮编区域，这样人们就能像这座伟大的城市一样，以及其他英国城市通过权力下放所做的那样，为自己扭转局面并做出改变，因为他们拥有了为自己做更多事情的能力。”
首相坚称，No 10 North 是实现“全国各地区良好增长”的关键。
他补充道：“我说每个邮编区域、每一个人，我是认真的。这就是我们要做的。没有被遗忘的角落，每处都能感受到被倾听，每个人都感觉到他们所处的地方可以比今天更好。
“全国的高街将焕发活力，英国将实现再工业化，将那些优质的就业机会带回我们的所有地区。各位，我们面前拥有如此巨大的机遇。我说过我想让英国重新建立信心。今天，我们有望真正建立起这种意识。让英国重新燃起希望。
“我认为如果我们继续这样工作，我们就能共同实现这一点。所以对我来说，这是一个如此美妙的时刻。这是我所信仰的一切，也是我一生努力奋斗的目标。”
伯纳姆先生昨晚还排除了提前举行大选的可能性，称这将“推迟”实施他自己版本的工党 2024 年政纲这一“关键工作”。
在接受《曼彻斯特晚报》采访时，这位前市长坚持表示他不会提前举行大选。他说：“不，我不会。我认为那样做是不正确的。
“我们生活在议会民主制中。2024 年有一份政纲。我将坚持那份政纲。我正在推进我的版本，但它仍然在该政纲之内。我只是认为我们需要专注于让国家运转起来。
“这是目前最大的优先级。大选会推迟那项关键工作。我也在尝试以不同的方式进行政治运作，就像我担任大曼彻斯特市长时那样。”
早些时候，伯纳姆先生还谈到了希望在整个英国营造一种“一体感”，并坚称 No 10 North “不仅服务于英格兰各地区，同样服务于苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰”。
伯纳姆表示：“这里可以成就大事”
新任首相周四首次与苏格兰第一部长约翰·斯威尼面对面会晤，并告知对方，另一次独立公投是“禁区”。
他还于格拉斯哥会见了威尔士第一部长 Rhun ap Iorwerth，后者敦促给予威尔士政府与苏格兰相同的权力下放权限，包括铁路、警务、司法和皇冠地产。
在 No 10 North 的演讲结束时，伯纳姆先生抨击了那些——他称“通常驻在伦敦的”——批评者，他声称这些人会将该项目视为一种“噱头”。
首相补充道：“每次需要就某事进行辩论开会时，所有人都得奔赴伦敦，这得花多少成本？
“这得花多少钱？所以实际上，我们拥有一个北极来平衡我们国家的南极（权力总是集中在那里），这不是更好吗？”
与伯纳姆先生一同出现在 No 10 North（该建筑也是 GCHQ 曼彻斯特及西北枢纽的所在地）的人员包括高级部长：财政大臣约翰·希利、第一国务秘书路易丝·海格，以及国家最高公务员内阁秘书安东尼娅·罗密欧。
PA
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部长否认放弃选举承诺，但称“房屋并非五分钟就能建好”
Athena Stavrou
安杰拉·雷纳将工党实现住房目标的可能性比作她跑完伦敦马拉松的可能性 (PA Wire)
安杰拉·雷纳表示，她不认为工党能在下次大选前实现其政纲中关于建设 1.5 million 套住房的主要承诺。
由安迪·伯纳姆新任命的住房部长否认她正在放弃该承诺，但将实现该目标的可能性比作她“跑伦敦马拉松”的机会。
在五年议会任期内建设 1.5 million 套住房的承诺是工党 2024. 年大选的关键部分。1.
但当被问及该目标是否仍然现实时，雷纳女士昨日在 BBC Breakfast 节目中表示：“我不会放弃它——我只是说这是一个非常艰巨的挑战。
“我将坚持这个目标，但这就像是我说我要在五小时内跑完伦敦马拉松一样。对我来说这将是一个真正的挑战，但我会做到的。”
她补充道：“这不是借口，但房子不可能在五分钟内就建好。我希望可以——但这需要时间。”
英格兰在 2024/25 年新建房屋 208,600 套，比前一年下降了 6% (PA)
当安迪·伯纳姆于周一就任首相时，安杰拉·雷纳被重新任命为住房大臣——由于此前在是否逃避印花税的问题上引发争论，她曾在 2025 年辞去这一职务。
雷纳女士表示，两年前制定房屋建设承诺时就已“非常有挑战性”——而由于建筑成本增加以及其他产生“实际负面影响”的因素，现在则“更具挑战性”。
然而，在有人向雷纳女士指出，政府在执政的前两年中建设的房屋不足 300,000 套——远低于五年内实现 1.5 million 目标所需的数量时，她表现得十分坚决。
她表示：“我是一个直率的人，1.5 million 套房屋是一个困难的目标……但我将坚持它，我不会被击败。
“人们一生都在低估我。如果你告诉我我做不到某件事，我会拼命去完成它。”
英格兰在 2024/25 年新建房屋 208,600 套，比前一年下降了 6%，是自 2015/16 年以来年度总数最低的一次，凸显了工党面临的挑战规模。
安迪·伯纳姆重新任命雷纳担任其在 2025 年辞职的职务 (路透社)
自工党在 2024, 7 月执政以来，已交付约 392,400 套净新增房屋，这意味着政府部门目前的进度大约仅为 2029 年前实现目标所需速率的三分之二。
房屋建筑业警告称，如果消费者信心不能增强、抵押贷款成本不能降低，且建筑部门的资产负债表不能更加健康，那么要实现满足工党目标所需规模的房屋建设，将依然是一场艰苦的战斗。
Centre Think Tank 主任托林·威尔金斯 (Torrin Wilkins) 表示，政府应取消印花税，并向各议会施加具有约束力的房屋建设目标，以促进该行业的增长。
“1.5 million 的目标一次又一次地被提及。它几乎快变成卡梅伦时代那种‘数万名移民’的目标了，即我们似乎永远无法实现，但却被不断提及，”他说道，并补充说如果政府不改变方向，就“不太可能”实现其目标。
威尔金斯先生表示，政府应将印花税替换为比例房产税，以“解锁”房屋销售，并给予开发商建设动力。
“开发商会查看该地区谁能负担得起房屋，而印花税是一个真正的障碍，”他说道。
“如果安迪·伯纳姆的目标是提供呼吸空间，那么取消印花税可能是该清单上的首要任务，因为这能让人们更轻松地更换大房或小房，从而创造额外的空间。”
他还建议向议会和地方当局下达具有约束力的目标，并对未达成目标的情况采取后果措施。
“我认为这将是一个良好的进步，真正推动这一意识：这并非一个可选的住房目标。这是一个国家状况，是一个需要严肃对待的国家紧急情况。”
Resolution Foundation 的高级研究与政策分析师汉娜·奥尔德里奇 (Hannah Aldridge) 表示，飙升的建筑成本和...
“过去几年发生的一些情况，基本上是建筑成本上升了，”她说。
“与此同时，我们也看到利率比我们在2010年代习惯的要略高。因此，人们能够借款买房的金额在减少，人们越来越难以获得抵押贷款来购买价格如此之高的房屋。”
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Rebecca Whittaker
据 NHS 称，英格兰约有 2.5 million 人患有 ADHD，但许多人仍未确诊 (PA)
数据显示，过去一年中，被开具 ADHD 药物处方的中年女性人数飙升了 40 per cent。
根据 NHS 发布的最新数据，去年英格兰共有约 427,000 人被开具治疗 ADHD 的药物，增加了 31 per cent。
但随着越来越多的人在成年后才被诊断出患有 ADHD，处方数量增长最剧烈的部分出现在成年人中。
约 267,000 名 18 岁及以上的患者被开具了 ADHD 药物，与 2024 年的 190,000 人相比增加了 40 per cent。
此外，55 至 59 岁的女性组也增加了约 40 per cent，去年共有 4,107 名患者被开具 ADHD 药物。在 50 至 54 岁的女性中也出现了类似的数据。
顾问精神科医生 Stefan Ivantu 博士告诉《独立报》：“中年女性寻求评估人数的增加，反映了人们终于意识到女性 ADHD 的表现形式，并欢迎这种对病耻感的减轻。”
虽然在 2025, 有 59,111 名 10 至 14 岁的男孩获得了处方，使他们成为最大的群体，但在所有年龄段的女性和女孩中都可以看到巨大的增长。
2024, 约 18,912 名 15 至 19 岁的女孩被开具了药物，但去年的这一数字增加了 5,000 多名患者。
据 NHS 称，英格兰约有 2.5 million 人患有 ADHD，但许多人未确诊。症状在男性和女性之间可能表现不同。
男孩通常表现出“多动”症状，而女性则经常表现为注意力不集中、焦虑和组织混乱。研究表明，这种与性别相关的社会化导致一代人在童年时期被忽视，直到成年后才寻求诊断。
“处方量的剧增使得临床质量比以往任何时候都更加至关重要，”Ivantu 博士补充道。
所有年龄段被开具 ADHD 药物的女性和女孩人数均出现大幅增长 (Getty/iStock)
“我们必须仔细排除身体和代谢因素，例如甲状腺问题或围绝经期，这些因素通常会模拟认知疲劳，同时要识别共病情况，如倦怠或焦虑。
“虽然药物可以带来改变，但它很少是唯一的解决方法。在一个充满持续技术干扰和现代生活压力的世界里，长期的健康需要将精准的医疗护理与生活方式的改变、技术界限以及健康的常规相结合。”
但根据 NHS 的数据，这种意识的提高正值 800,000 多人等待 ADHD 评估转诊之际。
慈善机构 ADHD UK 的首席执行官 Henry Shelford 告诉《独立报》：“我们在 ADHD 治疗方面存在巨大的医疗缺口，以有意义的方式缩小这一缺口至关重要。
“ADHD 直到 2000 年才通过 Nice 被 NHS 正式认可为儿童疾病，2008 年才认可为成人疾病。因此对于
人们在好奇为什么会有这么多中年人（包括我在内）前来寻求诊断和治疗，这是因为我们小时候没有机会被发现。我们现在正在讨论 ADHD（注意缺陷多动障碍）；人们在自己身上意识到了这一点并前来寻求帮助。”
切尔西心理诊所 (Chelsea Psychology Clinic) 的联合创始人、顾问心理学家埃琳娜·图罗尼 (Elena Touroni) 博士解释说，许多女性在看到自己的孩子获得诊断后，在描述中认出了自己。
“我们在诊所看到的是，四十多岁和五十多岁的女性人数在增加，因为她们多年来一直苦苦挣扎的事情终于有了一个名称，”她说道。
“许多人已经补偿了数十年，通过巨大的努力和智慧维持着生活。我们将此称为‘掩饰’ (masking)——即在内心体验截然不同时，为了表现出掌控局面而做出的意识或无意识的努力。维持这种状态需要耗费巨大的能量，且极少不伴随焦虑。”
一名 NHS（英国国家医疗服务体系）发言人表示：“我们知道我们需要做更多工作来改善对 ADHD 患者的护理，这就是为什么 NHS 委托成立了一个 ADHD 专案组，旨在研究一系列问题，包括诊断趋势以及治疗方法与药物之间的正确平衡。”
“根据专案组的建议，我们正开始重新设计当地服务，转型支持体系并缩短等待时间。”
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连续热浪烤干乡村，农民警告行业“无法这样维持下去”
Suha Kidwai
本·安德鲁斯 (Ben Andrews) 经营 Herefordshire 的 Broadward Hall 农场（由对方提供）
随着连续热浪和长期干旱天气的袭来，农民们发出警告，称该行业“无法这样维持下去”。
威尔士部分地区已宣布进入官方干旱状态，而英格兰东部和南部地区继续遭受极低降雨量或无雨的打击，使农业从业者承受巨大压力。
在 Herefordshire 经营 Broadward Hall 农场的本·安德鲁斯 (Ben Andrews) 告诉《独立报》：“我们的蔬菜今年处境非常艰难。此时此刻，我们真的必须坐下来考虑，明年是否还要种植蔬菜。”
“对于许多农民来说，这是迄今为止最糟糕的一次收获，而且已经连续第二年了。我们不能这样维持下去。”
安德鲁斯先生是第四代农民，他拥有最多 600 英亩的土地用于养殖永久放牧牛，并为一项全国蔬菜配送计划种植包括土豆、西兰花、羽衣甘蓝和生菜在内的蔬菜。
“我想说，很多农民因为这种天气遭受了沉重打击，”他警告道。
国家干旱小组本周早些时候将八个地区确定为处于“长期干旱天气”状态，这是宣布正式干旱之前的最后阶段。
在肯特郡与东萨塞克斯郡交界的 Romney Marsh 经营 Lamb 农场的西蒙·赖特 (Simon Wright) 告诉《独立报》：“我经营畜牧业，我认为这可能是我们经历过的最干燥的时期之一。”
“我们所有的田地都由水沟分隔，显然这能让我们的羊和牛留在正确的位置，但现在所有的水沟都干涸了，所以基本上羊和牛随处乱逛。水也是一个问题。幸运的是我们有自来水，但这显然会花费我们一大笔钱。”
西蒙·赖特 (Simon Wright) 在罗姆尼沼泽 (Romney Marsh) 的兰姆农场 (Lamb Farm) 饲养数千只动物（由供应商提供）
这位在 1,200 英亩土地上饲养数千头牛羊的农民补充道：“我们的饲料用完了。我们开始使用冬季饲料。我们刚刚开始给羊喂干草，希望天气能尽快好转。这非常昂贵。通常在这个时节，它们依靠吃草生存。”
“如果这种情况持续下去，这份工作将不再盈利——我们将不得不动用储备金。”
国家农民联盟 (National Farmers’ Union) 副主席保罗·汤普金斯 (Paul Tompkins) 表示，在经历了连续几年的多变天气后，种植者们正在“昼夜不停”地给作物浇水并照料牲畜。
他说：“对于许多耕种农民来说，在 2024 和 2025 年都受到极端天气影响（经历了干旱和洪水）之后，这可能是另一个困难且昂贵的收获季。”
汤普金斯先生敦促政府通过改革许可制度和放宽规划规则，使在农场建设蓄水池变得更容易，从而加强应对气候变化的长期韧性。
赖特先生表示，由于没有足够的草供动物食用，他农场里的动物已经不得不喂食冬季饲料（由供应商提供）
安德鲁斯 (Andrews) 先生补充道：“天气只会越来越热。天气正变得更加极端——六个月前，我们的作物基本上都被淹在了水下。”
“北方那些尚未受到严重影响的农场迟早也会受影响。这是一个警告，不能等待；农民需要做好准备。”
“我们需要更好的气象防御措施，以便增强韧性，因为没有人能逃得掉。”
零售商表示，由于作物产量下降威胁到杂货价格上涨，他们也在密切关注局势。
英国零售联合会 (BRC) 食品与可持续发展总监安德鲁·欧皮 (Andrew Opie) 表示：“包括干旱在内的极端天气会影响作物产量，并给价格带来上涨压力。”
他补充说，零售商们正在寻找合适的替代供应商，以尽量减少对购物者的影响。
据国家干旱小组 (National Drought Group) 称，英格兰大部分地区正处于干旱边缘 (PA)
预报员认为短期内难以获得缓解。气象局 (Met Office) 首席气象学家威尔·朗 (Will Lang) 警告说，未来几周的降雨“不太可能广泛或大量”，尤其是在最干旱的南部地区。
国家干旱小组主席兼环境署 (Environment Agency) 水务总监海伦·韦克汉姆 (Helen Wakeham) 表示，高温天气正在迅速耗尽资源，同时推高需求。
她说：“这是一个糟糕的组合，我们正看到这对我们的农民、野生动物以及公众和商业可用水量产生的影响，”并敦促公众尽可能节约用水。
环境、食品和农村事务部 (Defra) 的一名发言人表示，政府意识到极端天气给该行业带来的沉重打击。
他们补充道：“我们正通过我们的农业计划以及与国家干旱小组的合作，帮助该行业建立应对气候冲击的更强韧性。”
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大卫·扬 (David Young)
伊莎贝拉·佩里·沙利文 (Isobella Perrie Sullivan) 昨日离开米思郡 (Co Meath) 的特里姆地区法院 (Trim District Court) (PA)
在警方截获一辆爱尔兰边境附近的汽车炸弹后，一名法律系学生被起诉。来自基尔代尔郡 (Co Kildare) 克莱恩 (Clane) 的 25 岁女子伊莎贝拉·佩里·沙利文，于昨日傍晚在米思郡特里姆地区法院的一次特别庭审中出庭。
负责调查此事件（涉及一起疑似共和派分裂分子的炸弹案）的爱尔兰警卫队 (Gardaí) 逮捕了作为该车司机的佩里·沙利文女士。
在一次基于情报的突击行动中，警卫队特别侦查组的成员于周三下午在莫纳汉郡 (Co Monaghan) 卡里克马克罗斯 (Carrickmacross) 南部的 N2 公路上拦截了该车辆。
爱尔兰警察局（Garda）将从该车辆中缴获的炸弹描述为“极其重大”。据了解，发现的装置包含疑似军用级爆炸物。
警察局消息人士将该炸弹描述为“高度复杂”且“先进”。另一名嫌疑人为一名 40 多岁的男子，目前仍被拘留在都柏林地区的一家警察局。
法庭听证会上获悉，在对其车辆进行搜查期间，在后座发现了一个包含 Semtex 炸药和一个雷管的袋子，导致该区域被疏散，佩里·苏利文（Perrie Sullivan）女士随后被逮捕。
法庭获悉，佩里·苏利文女士当时正在攻读法学学位，希望成为一名大律师。由于罪行严重，警察局反对保释。
爱尔兰司法部长吉姆·奥卡拉汉（Jim O’Callaghan）将此次缴获描述为“令人非常担忧” (PA)
来自 Phoenix Law 的辩护律师加文·布思（Gavin Booth）表示，他的当事人被要求将一个袋子带到北部，并不清楚其中装有什么，并补充说她受到了“操纵”。
保释附带了一系列条件，包括支付一份 €15,000 的独立担保金（€15,000）、上缴护照、居住在警察局批准的地址、提供一个可 24/7 全天候联系的手机号码、每天在纳斯（Naas）警察局签到，以及晚上 9 点至次日早晨 7, 点的禁足令。
警察局局长贾斯汀·凯利（Justin Kelly）昨天上午在蒂珀雷郡（Co Tipperary）的一次警察局毕业典礼上与媒体交谈时，确认了此次行动的细节。
“需要明确的是，我们发现的是一次极其重大的缴获，”他说。“所以这是一个爆炸装置。”
凯利局长补充道：“任何此类性质的缴获都非常令人担忧。
“然而，我们确实知道，有一小部分异见共和主义者并不认同《受难节协议》（Good Friday Agreement）。他们没有将武器和爆炸物（弃用），你知道，他们没有按照除核程序进行正规处理。
“所以这是我们持续应对的问题。
“这一小部分个体——我会将他们描述为激进化的共和主义者——这是爱尔兰警察局（An Garda Síochána）在一段时间内将继续面临的威胁。”
爱尔兰司法部长吉姆·奥卡拉汉将此次缴获描述为“令人非常担忧”。
“我认为这证明了异见共和主义活动仍存在持续威胁，”他说。
“但我也知道，北爱尔兰警察局（PSNI）与爱尔兰警察局之间一直有着良好的合作。我认为，最近的进展以及爱尔兰警察局的工作表明，PSNI 与爱尔兰警察局之间保持这种密切合作是有益的。”
PSNI 助理总警司戴维·贝克（Davy Beck）表示，爱尔兰边境两边的警察在应对异见共和主义恐怖威胁方面拥有“共同承诺”。
DUP 领导人加文·罗宾逊将这一进展描述为“令人不寒而栗” (PA)
DUP 领导人加文·罗宾逊（Gavin Robinson）将这一进展描述为“令人不寒而栗”。这位贝尔法斯特东区议员质疑爱尔兰政府是否需要增加对打击异见共和主义的关注。
“我非常欢迎这次重大的缴获以及由我们在爱尔兰警察局的同事所实施的逮捕，我们每天都与他们保持非常密切的合作，”他说。
北爱尔兰大臣克里斯·布赖恩特爵士（Sir Chris Bryant）称赞警察局挫败了一次潜在的袭击。
“拦截这样一个危险装置无疑挽救了生命，并确保了边境两边社区的安全，”他说。“强大的跨境安全合作依然比以往任何时候都至关重要。”
“所有参与阻止此事的人都值得巨大的赞赏，”他说道。“他们的行动可能使无辜的家庭免于遭受难以想象的悲剧。”
Sinn Féin 斯多蒙特议会议员 Gerry Kelly 将负责该爆炸装置的人描述为“鲁莽之辈”。
“负责此事的人不代表任何人，缺乏支持，且无法为我们的社区提供任何积极的贡献。他们的行为完全是鲁莽的，”他说道。
“参与其中的人应该放弃其徒劳的行为，彻底退出历史舞台，让我们的社区能够继续在和平中共同前进。”
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不要提到关税
在连接加拿大安大略省与美国密歇根州的戈迪·豪（Gordie Howe）大桥开通活动上，孩子们在玩棍式曲棍球。该桥是以这位传奇加拿大冰球运动员的名字命名，他在职业生涯的大部分时间里为底特律红翼队效力。路透社
凤凰之飞
在埃德巴斯顿（Edgbaston）举行的 The Hundred 比赛中，伯明翰凤凰队的 Eva Gray 没接住球，而特伦特火箭队的 Sophia Dunkley 在场上占据优势。路透社
在鞭笞之中
谁在我身后？
一级方程式锦标赛领先者 Kimi Antonelli 在匈牙利大奖赛练习赛前的维修区墙边。路透社
掷圆盘运动员 Vitaliy Chernov 在叶卡捷琳堡举行的俄罗斯田径锦标赛上进行比赛。路透社
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哗啦啦：一名孩子在伍斯特靠近塞文河的一座凉爽喷泉中尽情玩耍 (David Davies/PA Wire)
高温天气将至，发布健康警报
尽管本周末有雨预报，但英国部分地区已生效黄色高温健康警报。警告将持续至明日上午9点，覆盖东米德兰兹、西米德兰兹、东南部、西南部、英格兰东部以及伦敦。
英国健康安全局表示，高温天气可能会对医疗和社会护理服务产生影响，并使脆弱人群处于风险之中。卫生官员还警告称，与水相关的事故可能会增加，包括冷水冲击和溺水的风险。
伦敦今日气温预计将达到 29C，伯明翰和诺里奇将达到 28C，但同时预报有雨。此前，英国经历了连续三波热浪，且今年春季是纪录以来最干燥的春季之一，全国多地实施了软管禁令。
气象局首席预报员 Steve Willington 表示：“高压一直是过去几周英国天气预报的关键特征，给许多地区带来了高于平均水平的气温和极其干燥的条件。”
默西赛德郡一车撞击灯柱导致四人死亡
昨日凌晨，一辆汽车在默西赛德郡撞上灯柱，导致四名二十多岁的男子死亡。默西赛德郡警方接报称，凌晨2点前，一辆黑色 Seat Cupra 汽车在从利物浦开往诺尔斯利途中，于海顿（Huyton）发生碰撞并冲出道路。
两名 23 岁男子、一名 24 岁男子和一名 26 岁男子在现场被宣布死亡。一名 27 岁男子作为车内乘客被送往医院，目前情况稳定。
警司 Paul Holden 表示：“对于他们的家人和亲人来说，这是一个极其沉痛的时刻，我们现在的首要任务是为他们查明碰撞是如何发生的。”
R&B 歌手 Chris Brown 对参与斗殴罪名认罪
R&B 歌手 Chris Brown 在南华克刑事法院对 2023 年在梅费尔一家俱乐部发生冲突后的斗殴罪名认罪。此前，他在梅费尔的 Tape 私人会员俱乐部舞池中用瓶子两次击中一名前友人的头部，原定于今年晚些时候面临审判。
昨日在南华克刑事法院，针对 Abraham Diaw 的导致实际身体伤害的袭击指控被撤销，同时两项持有攻击性武器的指控也被撤销。
检察官表示，布朗在用玻璃瓶击打受害者的头部两次后，其声乐教练、40 岁的奥莫洛鲁·阿金洛卢 (Omololu Akinlolu) 加入其中并击打该男子头部。皇家检控署 (CPS) 补充道，受害者在毫无防备地坐在地板上时还遭到了踢打。他因头部和膝盖受伤被送往圣玛丽医院。
布朗与其声乐教练阿金洛卢一同被起诉，后者此前否认造成实际身体伤害的袭击指控，现已承认参与斗殴罪。两人将于 10 月 26 日就斗殴指控被判刑。
沙特王子死于酒精与派对药物混合物
昨日法庭获悉，一名在酒店房间内被发现死亡的沙特王室成员，其血液酒精浓度几乎是酒驾上限的三倍，且将酒精与药物 GHB 混合使用。阿卜杜拉·本·法哈德·本·阿卜杜拉·本·阿卜杜勒-阿齐兹·本·贾拉维·阿尔-沙特 (Abdullah bin Fahad bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Jalawi al Saud) 于去年 11 月 25 日在伦敦西部肯辛顿的万豪酒店浴室中被发现死亡。
内西伦敦验尸官法院的死因研讯听证会获悉，这名 29 岁的男子于 11 月 19 日办理入住，计划停留一周。一名清洁工发现他穿着整齐，躺在浴室地板上。毒理学报告显示，该年轻王室成员的血乙醇浓度为每 100 毫升血液 222 毫克酒精，处于可能导致昏迷的范围。
助理验尸官让·哈金 (Jean Harkin) 表示，她不认为他是蓄意自杀。她记录的裁定结果为意外死亡，死因为多种药物摄入。
“巨型橡皮艇”搭载纪录数量的移民
周四创下了新纪录，共有 165 名移民乘坐单艘船只成功跨越英吉利海峡抵达英国。这一数字超过了本月初从法国出发的单船最高纪录 128 人。
边境安全司令部将该船拖至多佛。据估计，该船长度约为 13 米 (42英尺)，与标准巴士相当。
难民慈善机构 Care4Calais 警告称，由于每艘船上挤进的人数不断增加，跨越海峡的航线正变得“越来越危险”。
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卡普费雷 (Cap Ferret) 大火在短短两天内烧毁 48 平方英里
Stephane Mahe
昨日，法国西南部拉卡诺 (Lacanau) 的穆希克 (Moutchic) 海滩游客在山火烟雾中 (AFP/Getty)
肆虐于法国西南部和西班牙中部的特大森林火灾已迫使超过 200,000 人离开家园。位于法国大西洋沿岸、距离波尔多仅 60 公里 (37 英里) 的卡普费雷附近的一场大火自周三以来已烧毁约 48 平方英里，使这一以壮丽景观和高端度假胜地闻名的地区面临严重威胁。
在西班牙，政府首次宣布进入山火国家紧急状态，因为马德里及邻近的阿维拉省（Ávila）发生的火灾促使首都西部的城镇进行撤离。
当局表示，数十名消防员受伤，但法国和西班牙均未报告死亡病例。当局还认为两起火灾的原因均为意外。
法国内政部表示，在法国的吉龙德省（Gironde）和朗德省（Landes），约有 141,000 人逃离家园。西班牙内政部表示，在西班牙中部，有 60,000 人被迫离开家园。
“这相当令人震撼，甚至令人恐惧，”法国阿雷斯（Arès）镇的居民劳伦特·莫雷蒂（Laurent Moretti）说。“如此规模的撤离此前从未发生过。我们唯一希望的是消防员能迅速将其控制住。”
吉龙德省的地方当局表示，53 栋房屋和一个露营地被大火摧毁，并补充说有 42 名消防员受伤。约 1,500 名逃离半岛的人通过海路抵达阿尔卡雄（Arcachon）市， some 乘坐小型水上出租车，其他则乘坐较大的船只。
数百名法国消防员已部署到位，昨天还派遣了额外的地面和空中增援力量以应对大火。与此同时，另一场重大山火在更南端的沿海地区燃烧，由于强风不利于灭火，火势尚未得到控制。
法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙（Emmanuel Macron）表示，法国将获得欧盟的增援，包括两架克罗地亚的 Canadair 灭火飞机、两架葡萄牙的 Air Tractor 飞机，以及来自捷克和斯洛伐克的两架黑鹰重型直升机。
西班牙的国家紧急状态意味着负责控制警察和安全部队的国家内政部已
接管并监督灭火工作。由于热浪的影响，火势被进一步推高，预计该国部分地区的温度将超过 39C。
马德里附近的两场大火在昨天下午合并为一场单一的大火，迅速烧毁了 11.5 平方英里。地区主席伊莎贝尔·迪亚斯-阿尤索（Isabel Díaz-Ayuso）称这是马德里历史上最严重的一次；而马德里地区的中央政府代表弗朗西斯科·马丁（Francisco Martín）表示，首都西部的城镇已有 20,000 人被命令在家中避难。
昨日在 Lege-Cap-Ferret 的消防员（路透社）
西班牙阿维拉省 La Adrada 附近升起的浓烟和火焰（美联社）
马丁先生表示，可能会有进一步的撤离行动，目前的优先任务是保护圣洛伦索（San Lorenzo）镇，那里是埃斯科里亚尔（Escorial）的所在地——即菲利普二世的 16 世纪皇家宫殿和修道院。
与此同时，在马德里西北方向不到两小时车程的阿维拉发生的一场大火已烧毁 34 平方英里，导致另有 1,500 人逃离。西班牙国民警卫队逮捕了一名男子，并正在调查另一名涉嫌在火灾风险禁区使用重型机械的人员。警方认为，火灾是由周四的一颗火花引发的。
西班牙内政部长费尔南多·格兰德-马拉斯卡（Fernando Grande-Marlaska）表示，意大利和希腊将分别派遣两架 Canadair 洒水灭火飞机。
布尔戈洪多（Burgohondo）市长弗朗西斯科·马丁内斯（Francisco Martínez）的居民在阿维拉被预防性撤离，他告诉西班牙国家广播电视台 TVE：“在我 60 年的人生中，我从未在我的村庄见过这样的事情，我从未见过如此规模的火灾。”
西班牙电视播放了撤离居民拍摄的视频，画面中火焰之墙顶部伴随着长长的烟柱，正穿过林地和灌木丛推进。强风和丘陵地形增加了消防员的救援难度，他们正使用消防车和推土机与大火作斗争。
在法国西南部，当局派遣船只协助撤离。官员表示，共有约 63,000 人（其中许多是游客）被告知撤离，因为两场规模巨大的独立火灾威胁到了民宅和露营地。
“从家里，我们可以看到火灾的情况……我们看到云层变得越来越暗，”约安·乌里恩（Yoan Urien）说道。在警方告知比斯卡罗斯（Biscarrosse）镇的所有邻居撤离后，他于周四晚间离开。
“我找到了一个能和宠物一起避难的地方，但……这相当令人震惊，”这位 26 岁的青年告诉路透社。
内政部长洛朗·努涅斯（Laurent Nunez）告诉当地电视台，另一场始于附近卡普费雷（Cap Ferret）北部的索莫斯（Saumos）的大火正威胁要切断半岛唯一的出路，也是法国本季度迄今为止最大的一场火灾。
卡普费雷半岛在撤离时的阿尔卡雄（Arcachon）度假者 (AFP/Getty)
一场山火在阿维拉省（Ávila province）的圣马丁-德-瓦尔代格列加斯（San Martin de Valdeiglesias）附近推进 (AP)
他表示，大火已席卷 10,000 公顷（24,700 英亩）以上的森林，烧毁 80 栋房屋，其中约 50 栋被完全摧毁。来自附近朗得（Landes）地区的安布尔·杜博斯（Ambre Dubos）表示：“这完全是末日景象。”
在一周之内，西班牙卡斯蒂利亚-拉曼恰（Castilla La Mancha）和马德里两个地区的火灾均创下历史最严重记录。在卡斯蒂利亚-拉曼恰的瓜达拉哈拉省（Guadalajara），消防员仍在努力扑灭西班牙历史上第二大火灾，该火灾在过去一周内摧毁了约 320 平方公里（120 平方英里）的土地。
本月初，西班牙南部的一场火灾造成 13 人死亡，是西班牙近期记忆中最致命的火灾。西班牙生态转型部长萨拉·阿格森（Sara Aagesen）表示，西班牙今年已有 1,140 平方公里（440 平方英里）的土地被烧毁，是 2025 年上半年烧毁面积的五倍多。
格兰德-马拉斯卡（Mr Grande-Marlaska）表示，除了马德里和阿维拉需要国家政府直接干预的重大火灾外，西班牙其他地区还有九场严重火灾。
一架 Canadair 水上飞机在西西里岛蒙雷阿莱（Monreale）地区的萨加纳（Sagana）山火现场投放灭火水 (AFP/Getty)
西班牙首相佩德罗·桑切斯（Pedro Sanchez）周三呼吁各政党达成一项应对气候变化的协议，他表示这将是适应一个更易发生火灾气候的关键。西班牙在近几个夏季经历了创纪录的高温，森林火灾的破坏力也在不断增加。
在意大利，山火继续肆虐西西里岛的部分地区，其中中西部的阿格里真托（Agrigento）省受灾尤为严重。在超过 40°C 的高温、低湿度和强风的推波助澜下，大火迫使零散地区撤离，并导致一名在卡尔塔尼塞塔（Caltanissetta）扑救火灾的消防员死亡。
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博·埃里克森（Bo Erickson）发自华盛顿特区
伊朗昨日袭击了伊拉克库尔德地区埃尔比勒机场附近的一个地区 (AFP/Getty)
美国导弹昨日袭击了伊朗境内的多个目标，唐纳德·特朗普总统誓言将对德黑兰及其在也门的胡塞武装盟友实施“重大军事惩罚”，不过他再次为与伊朗达成外交协议留下了空间。
在旨在结束战争的临时休战协议崩溃两周后，伊朗武装部队采取反击，向邻近阿拉伯国家境内的美国基地开火，并警告那里的人员，他们可能会袭击美国人员使用的非军事建筑。
特朗普先生昨天在白宫告诉记者：“我们正在与他们交谈。我认为他们态度很认真。我认为……这是我们见过的最认真的态度，但这并不意味着我们能达成目标。”
在被问到伊朗战争的退出策略时，特朗普先生表示：“有一种军事退出方式，即我们保持现状继续前进，甚至可以加大剂量，摧毁他们拥有的一切。或者有一种更明智的策略，那就是达成协议。”但他补充道：“我们已准备就绪。我们随时可以出击。”
在胡塞武装表示周四袭击了两艘沙特油轮后，特朗普先生表示，他将要求伊朗为这些武装分子的任何进一步袭击负责。
到目前为止，波斯湾的入口一直是这场战争的焦点。这场战争在近五个月内已导致数千人死亡，推高了全球通胀，并引发了对经济衰退的担忧。
控制也门北部和西部的胡塞武装宣布对沙特阿拉伯实施海军封锁。为了绕过伊朗对霍尔木兹海峡近乎全面的封锁，沙特每天通过管道将数百万桶石油分流至红海。
目击者称，几波袭击击中了也门的荷台达港。与胡塞武装相关的 Al Masirah 电视台表示，沙特阿拉伯发起了此次袭击。
根据中东司令部（US Centcom）报道，美国对伊朗军事综合体的一次袭击
美国军队在周四深夜和昨日凌晨发动了空袭，这是连续第13个夜晚发起袭击，这促使伊朗向设有美国基地的邻近阿拉伯国家开火。
据伊朗媒体援引吉兰省一名安全官员的话称，美国导弹击中了里海省吉兰州 Ziba Kenar 地区的一个革命卫队海军总部。据 ILNA 通讯社报道，省政府当局表示，美国的发射物还击中了港口城市班达尔安扎利（Bandar Anzali）。
国家广播公司 IRIB 表示，美国对伊朗城市艾哈瓦兹（Ahvaz）的袭击造成四人死亡，五人受伤。在法尔斯（Fars）通讯社发布的一份声明中，革命卫队警告海湾国家的民众，美国军事人员可能会将“城市中的建筑物作为指挥其罪行的地方”，并面临潜在的袭击。
特朗普先生周四告诉 Axios，他正在考虑重新发动针对伊朗的大规模作战。这家美国新闻媒体引用他的话称：“他们还没有感受到足够的痛苦。”
伊朗卫生部在 X 平台上的一份声明中表示，自 6 月下旬与美国军队恢复冲突以来，已有 59 人死亡，666 人受伤。伊朗媒体援引伊朗最高联合军事指挥官的话称，每一名伊朗人被杀，伊朗将杀死一名美国武装部队成员。
这场战争已导致 18 名美国军人死亡。五角大楼周一表示，自 7 月 7 日以来已有 100 名军人受伤，其中 96% 已重返岗位。官员们告诉路透社，到目前为止已有 500 多名美国士兵受伤。
路透社
周四在红海曼德海峡对沙特油轮的袭击导致油价上涨 7%，自 5 月以来首次突破每桶 $100。然而，到昨日格林威治标准时间 1600 左右，布伦特原油期货下跌超过 $4，至 $96. 以上。
消息人士称，在中国发起的推动下，巴基斯坦正在探索恢复美伊之间关于结束战争的停滞谈判。伊朗内政部长埃斯坎达尔·莫梅尼（Eskandar Momeni）本周访问伊斯兰堡期间进行了探索性讨论——这是他过去 10 天内的第二次访问。
与此同时，胡塞武装的袭击迫使其他几艘油轮掉头并通过苏伊士运河向北航行，可能采取更长的路线绕道非洲前往亚洲。消息人士称，周四部分公司经过红海南部海域的航运保险成本翻了一番。尽管如此，周四离开曼德海峡的 18 艘船中有一半运载原油，其中包括两艘中国超级油轮。周四通过霍尔木兹海峡的油轮数量下降至仅有一艘，为 5 月 7 日以来的最低水平。
世界
一名男子将失去一只眼睛，而另一名男子的体内有一颗弹丸嵌入在关键血管附近。
Shweta Sharma 报道德里安全部队使用争议性武器的情况
Shaikh Irshad Mansoori 在德里学生抗议活动中受伤后住院 (Supplied/AFP/Getty)
这一切在几秒钟内就发生了。当 Z 世代抗议者走上德里街头要求改革印度教育系统时，数十颗弹丸撕碎了 Shaikh Irshad Mansoori 的脸部、颈部和肩膀，而他们面对的是警察的警棍、催泪瓦斯，在某些情况下则是弹丸枪。
其中一颗弹丸仍然留在 Mansoori 的体内。医生告诉他，由于弹丸嵌入在颈部附近的一根关键血管太近，无法安全取出，他可能余生都必须带着它生活。
Mansoori, 25, 在 7 月 20 日与数千名抗议者一起向印度议会行进，他表示自己在近距离被弹丸枪击中，这是一种争议性武器，一次射击即可发射数百颗微小的铅球。
在一次残酷的警察镇压行动中，他被认为是四名遭受弹丸伤害的人员之一。此次镇压引发了国际批评，但未能阻止这场由青年领导的运动，而该运动是对总理纳伦德拉·莫迪（Narendra Modi）权威的重大挑战。
德里警方否认在镇压期间使用弹丸枪，并针对这一说法发布了“假新闻警示”，而安全部队的另一个部门则表示正在调查相关报告。
Mansoori 在德里附近的古鲁格拉姆一家跨国公司工作，他说那天他为了办理签证相关工作前往国家首都，行程约 30 英里，决定在途中短暂加入游行。
此次游行是由 Cockroach Janata Party 发起的，这是一个由青年领导的运动。由于一场影响超过两百万人的试卷泄露事件，该组织已抗议一个月以上，要求教育部长 Dharmendra Pradhan 辞职。
随着抗议者无视限制向议会进发，警方和准军事部队使用了催泪瓦斯和警棍。据当地媒体报道，冲突导致 60 多名抗议者和 118 名警员受伤。
[[IMG_Mansoori in hospital ahead of his surgery (Supplied)]]
曼苏里（Mansoori）的一位不愿透露姓名的朋友描述了事件的经过，因为曼苏里在接受取出体内金属弹丸的手术后，仍然难以长时间说话。
该朋友告诉《独立报》（The Independent），曼苏里当时与一群示威者处于主要抗议地点詹塔尔-曼塔尔（Jantar Mantar）附近，随后警方发射了催泪瓦斯并用警棍冲向他们。
“每个人都在和平行进，这时警察开始发射催泪瓦斯。人们开始感觉到喉咙和眼睛里有烟雾，”他说。“伊尔沙德（Irshad）走上前去恳请安保人员不要击打他们，说他们只是学生，这时一名身穿蓝色制服的部队成员用枪指向了他。”
“多枚弹丸击中了我，我感到眼睛附近有刺痛感，”曼苏里说。“弹丸穿透了我的右眼，一直延伸到我的脸颊和鼻子。我能尝到血的味道，全身开始出血。”
[[IMG_Mansoori after pellets were removed from his face (Supplied)]]
曼苏里来自中部省份中央邦（Madhya Pradesh），独自居住在古鲁格拉姆（Gurugram），由同行抗议者将其送往医院。
他要求家人不要前往德里，说有朋友在照顾他。“他有三四个弹丸深深地嵌入体内。一个在眼睛附近，另一个在颈部深处，还有一个在鼻子附近。另有一个击中了他的头皮，但那个没有造成太大伤害，”他的朋友说。
“起初，医生说他需要进行三到四次独立手术，但医疗团队协作，在一次手术中就移除了几乎所有弹丸。只有一颗弹丸，位于颈部附近，”
曼苏里担心这颗弹丸将永远留在他的体内。“我们询问那颗弹丸会怎样。医生说它将在他的余生中一直留在那里。我们询问他们是否能保证因此不会发生任何意外，但他们说无法提供任何保证，只能说它将永久留在那里，”他的朋友说。
发射弹丸的散弹枪最早于 2010 年在动荡的喜马拉雅地区克什米尔被用于镇压反印度抗议活动，当局将其描述为“非致命性”的人群控制武器。在 2018, 政府在议会承认，在之前的两年里，克什米尔地区有 17 人被弹丸枪杀死。
近期，印度军队被指控在 2024 年农民抗议期间使用了弹丸枪，尽管警方否认了这些指控。
在曼苏里被射击地点不远处，萨希尔·洛查布（Sahil Lohchab）手里拿着印度国旗带领一群抗议者，随后他也受到了类似的伤害。他的朋友希瓦姆·雷迪（Shivam Reddy）告诉《独立报》，这名 20 岁的德里大学学生极有可能因为弹丸伤而导致“右眼完全失明”。
洛查布本人曾想加入警察部队，并在今年早些时候参加了入学考试。考虑到永久性的视觉或听力障碍可能会使一个人被取消加入该部队的资格，这一讽刺之处并未被他的家庭朋友所忽视。
雷迪表示，洛查布在下午 3.30pm 左右受伤时，正带领着大约 500 人的抗议人群。
“他向警察和快速行动部队（RAF）跑去，告诉他们不要攻击，因为他们是在和平抗议，但警方可能认为”
他表示：“他们将他视为威胁并直接将他作为目标。他被弹丸枪击中了。弹丸四散，击中了他的身体和面部的多个部位。”
“医生告诉我们，他的眼睛只有百分之一的保住机会，”雷迪说，并补充道，一名医生也确认了他的伤势是由弹丸枪造成的。
萨希尔·洛赫查布 (Sahil Lohchab) 的亲友表示，他的眼睛恢复视力的机会十分渺茫 (由相关方提供)
雷迪说，洛赫查布从哈丁格夫人医学院医院 (Lady Hardinge Medical College hospital) 被转移到萨夫达章医院 (Safdarjung Hospital)，甚至去了一家私立医院，但由于其病情严重而无法得到治疗。“随后我们将他送往全印度医学科学学院 (AIIMS)，他在那里入院并接受了手术，以取出包括眼睛内的弹丸，”他说。
洛赫查布的朋友们对领导抗议活动的“蟑螂人民党” (Cockroach Janta Party) 表示不满，认为该组织没有提供帮助，甚至没有联系他们。
“我们是为了国家而走上街头，但蟑螂人民党至少应该尝试询问萨希尔的健康状况，他——”
洛赫查布的朋友们发起了一项募捐活动，以支付他的治疗和康复费用。“我们寻求公众、政府和活动人士对萨希尔的支持，”他说。
《独立报》已通过电子邮件联系快速行动部队 (Rapid Action Force) 寻求评论。通过电话联系其办公室的尝试均未成功。
快速行动部队是中央预备警察部队 (Central Reserve Police Force) 的骚乱控制部门，而后者是该国最大的准军事部队。
洛赫查布在接受面部和胸部取出弹丸手术后的照片 (由相关方提供)
中央预备警察部队表示，在收到学生被弹丸击伤的报告后，他们已启动调查以确定事件的确切经过。
一名发言人在周五告诉《印度快报》：“我们正在全面调查整个事件的范围。现在发表评论还为时过早。”
德里警方否认其人员对抗议者使用了弹丸枪，称此类指控“完全虚假且具有误导性”。
他们在 X 平台的一篇帖子中表示：“德里警方既没有弹丸枪，也没有在当前的抗议活动中使用它们。请公众不要分享或传播任何未经核实或具有误导性的信息。”
据报道，在游行期间受伤的另外两名人员选择保持匿名。其中一人据称是来自《展望》(Outlook) 杂志的记者，其背部和一只手臂被击中。
他表示，他看到一名安保人员向人群举起枪，于是他转身背对着。他告诉该杂志：“我看到枪口对着我，立即跑开了。”
“有什么东西击中了我的背包和手臂。如果我没转身，可能就击中我的胸部或脸部了。”
他后来告诉 Scroll 网站：“人们在投掷石头，警察在发射催泪弹。然后我看到他们部署了弹丸枪。我看到一名人员用弹丸枪指着我。我转身开始跑，结果背部和手被击中了。”
根据 Scroll 的报道，他的一份政府医院处方单中提到，其身体右侧有“26 个小圆孔伤口”，且“与弹丸以斜角击中一致”。
文中指出：“伤口覆盖区域为 32cm x 12cm，边缘内翻，每个穿孔周围有环形擦伤圈，穿孔周围伴有片状青紫色挫伤，提示为弹丸进入伤口。”
据称在针对学生抗议者时使用了弹丸枪，这引发了广泛的谴责。
获奖作家阿米塔夫·高什（Amitav Ghosh）表示：“使用弹丸枪对付抗议者的做法始于克什米尔，而现在这些枪被部署在了国家的首都。”
“近期美国和印度历史给出的一个清晰教训是，源于‘边缘’的战术最终也会被用于中心地带。”
作家兼活动人士哈什·曼德尔（Harsh Mander）质疑是谁将弹丸枪交到了快速行动部队（Rapid Action Force）手中。他问道：“安全机构里难道没有人有良心吗？”
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世界
索南·旺楚克结束了与印度“蟑螂”抗议活动相关的绝食 (X/@Sonam Wangchuk)
组织者称反政府集会将继续进行
印度活动人士索南·旺楚克（Sonam Wangchuk）昨日结束了为期 26 天的绝食，这次行动有助于激励一项青年运动，使其成为印度近年来的最大规模抗议活动之一。
在一些竞争最激烈的入学考试被指出现泄题后，旺楚克成为了印度“蟑螂”抗议活动的聚集点，该活动始于一个多月前，要求进行教育改革。
此后，该运动触及了公众对失业、政府问责制和经济机会更广泛的愤怒，吸引了专业人士、家庭和活动人士前往新德里以及全国各城市的抗议现场。
旺楚克先生在 X 平台的一篇帖子中表示，在数十名国会议员的呼吁以及“就各项条件进行了长期谈判，并考虑到国家可能出现暴力情况”后，他在两名联邦部长的见证下结束了绝食。
总理纳伦德拉·莫迪（Narendra Modi）最近首次对这些抗议活动做出回应，宣布设立快速审理法院，以起诉涉及试卷泄露的案件。抗议组织者表示，在教育部长达曼德拉·普拉丹（Dharmendra Pradhan）辞职之前，示威活动将继续进行。
巴勒斯坦村庄附近发生致命冲突，造成五人死亡
昨日，在巴勒斯坦村庄附近的一次冲突中，四名巴勒斯坦人和一名以色列人被杀。随着犹太定居者在被占领的约旦河西岸针对巴勒斯坦人的暴力活动升级，近几周的伤亡人数持续增加。
据联合国的数据，这起发生在纳布卢斯西南方向塔尔村（Tal）附近的事件发生时，自今年年初以来，定居者对巴勒斯坦村庄的袭击大幅增加。
罗马尼亚击落疑似“见证者”无人机
官员表示，罗马尼亚昨日当地时间 11 点左右，在东部帕迪纳镇（Padina）附近击落了一架进入该国领空的无人机。
罗马尼亚军队表示，该无人机的来源和目的尚未确定，但总参谋长格奥尔吉塔·弗拉德（Gheorghita Vlad）将军表示，该机看起来像是一架“见证者”（Shahed）——即俄罗斯在针对乌克兰时使用的伊朗设计攻击无人机。
当天早些时候，一名军队消息人士告诉路透社：“目前正在进行调查以确定无人机的来源。但在这个世界的这个部分，俄罗斯才是袭击者。”
印度安全部队在动荡的喜马拉雅地区克什米尔，在周三疑似武装分子杀害一名警察后，采取了大规模的彻夜打击行动，拘留了 1,000 多人。
周四凌晨，他们还拆除了两名涉嫌武装分子的家庭住宅，分别为南克什米尔的 Haroon Ganie 和 Adil Ahmad Thokar。警方表示，这些嫌疑人与被禁组织“拉什卡-艾-塔伊巴” (Lashkar-e-Taiba) 有关。
印度预备警察部队的警长 Ashiq Hussain Qureshi 在为前往阿马尔纳特 (Amarnath) 洞穴圣地朝圣的印度教徒执行守卫任务时，在阿南特纳格 (Anantnag) 镇被枪杀。这是今年该地区在一次涉嫌武装分子袭击中出现的首例伤亡，警方怀疑一名巴基斯坦武装分子参与其中。
据《印度快报》报道，在这次杀戮之后，安全部队在斯利纳格拘留了近 700 人，在布德加姆拘留了 200 人，在巴拉穆拉拘留了 178 人，在甘德尔巴尔拘留了 100 人。
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Voices
约翰·伦图尔 (John Rentoul) 表示，允许美国飞机使用英国皇家空军 (RAF) 空军基地袭击伊朗，完全违背了英国公众的意愿——但这突显了安迪·伯纳姆在面对美国总统时的窘境
伯纳姆昨日抵达位于曼彻斯特的 10 North 办公 (Getty)
安迪·伯纳姆在担任首相后的首批决定之一中，批准美国使用英国基地对伊朗进行袭击。他延续了基尔·斯塔默的政策，即允许将这些基地用于英国政府所谓的在中东的“防御性”行动，即便在唐纳德·特朗普升级军事行动之后依然如此。
这一点意义重大，但在新政府成立的兴奋之余，在某种程度上被人们忽视了。
即便在今天，关于伊朗政权威胁袭击英国皇家空军费尔福德 (RAF Fairford) 基地的评论，重点仍在于德黑兰是否具备打击那么远目标的的能力，而不是关注促使对方做出该反应的英国决定。
伯纳姆的决定——据推测其外交大臣埃德·米利班德 (Ed Miliband) 参与了咨询——至关重要，因为它违背了公众意愿。周三的一项 YouGov 民意调查发现，58% 的英国公众反对允许美国人使用英国基地，仅有 26% 的人表示支持。
该问题的措辞非常谨慎，尽管毫无疑问，许多回答是出于对特朗普总统或任何海外军事干预的广泛反对。该问题询问的是关于允许美国人“专门对伊朗的导弹基地发动袭击”的许可，而这正是前检察长理查德·赫默 (Richard Hermer) 判定这些袭击为“防御性”且因此符合国际法的依据。我们必须假设新任检察长埃莉·里夫斯 (Ellie Reeves) 持相同观点。
有些人会认为——而在早年，斯塔默、赫默、伯纳姆和米利班德可能就在其中——自特朗普升级袭击以来
这就是他作为首相的样子，在一次他起初警告过与伊拉克战争有相似之处的冲突中授权采取军事行动。
另一方面，有一种合理的观点认为，伊朗的导弹威胁到了海湾盟友和国际航运，因此摧毁发射装置是防御性的。伊斯兰革命卫队对费尔福德皇家空军基地的威胁为这一论点提供了支撑。
但令人惊讶的是，这一论点竟然是由“左翼民粹主义者”伯纳姆和米利班提出的。后者在担任反对党领袖期间，在2013年挫败了巴拉克·奥巴马针对叙利亚巴沙尔·阿萨德的打击行动。
米利班一直让自己与他认为的“新工党”对美国的顺从保持距离。他反对伊拉克战争，且在10年后拒绝支持大卫·卡梅伦通过打击行动惩罚使用化学武器的阿萨德。因此，下议院的投票未能通过，结果导致美国政府放弃了执行奥巴马“红线”的计划。
而伯纳姆则投票支持参与入侵伊拉克，但随后表示后悔。他在2024年出版的半回忆录、半宣言著作《向北行》(Head North) 中写道：“我从这次经历中吸取了痛苦的教训，在随后的几年里，每当此类决定提交至议会时，我倾向于投票反对采取军事行动。”
然而，现在他作为首相，在一次他起初警告过与伊拉克战争有“相似之处”的冲突中授权采取军事行动。他同意基尔·斯塔默爵士拒绝让美国人在最初打击中使用英国基地的决定，但他也
在伊朗发射导弹并作为报复封锁霍尔木兹海峡后，立即同意了斯塔默对此立场的转变。
到目前为止，这一立场保持不变，政府发言人在昨天再次重申：“英国对待这场冲突的方式依然如初——我们致力于保护我国人民、我国利益及我们的盟友，根据国际法行事，且不被卷入更广泛的冲突之中。”
但最后一点是个谜：当美国轰炸机从格洛斯特郡的费尔福德和英属印度洋领地的迪戈加西亚起飞去打击伊朗目标时，我们究竟没有卷入什么样的“更广泛冲突”？
而且，如果特朗普总统执行他上周发出的疯狂威胁，即除非伊斯兰革命卫队“来到谈判桌前进行谈判”，否则“下周”将炸毁发电厂和桥梁，会发生什么？这也将摧毁美国打击行动是“防御性”的论点。
在这种情况下，在里夫斯的建议下，伯纳姆和米利班将不得不再次撤回使用英国基地的许可。
不过到目前为止，这位新首相凭借一项与美国政府静默合作的务实政策化险为夷，且没有激起反美抗议者走上街头。伯纳姆的“大帐篷”——他的左翼与中间派联盟——目前仍然完好无损。
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观点
布赖恩·伊诺，英国最具开拓精神的音乐家之一，透露了为什么他愿意让自己的收入中有更大一部分被征税，以造福国家。
伊诺是120多位常驻英国的百万富翁之一，他们签署了一封公开信，要求首相对他们征收更多税款（盖蒂图片社）
我国有数百万人经常无法购买食品和洗漱用品等基本商品，或者无法支付所需的能源费用。我们是世界上第六富有的国家——但如果你读过约瑟夫·罗温特里基金会（Joseph Rowntree Foundation）的新报告，你可能不会意识到这一点。该报告发现，在最近的六个月期间，英国有创纪录的 7.4 million 低收入家庭缺乏基本生活必需品。
然而，与此同时，英国最富有的人群的财富却在增加。
目前英国共有 157 位亿万富翁，共同拥有高达 £784 的集体财富。与此同时，五分之一的孩子生活在贫困中，小企业纷纷倒闭，服务体系因投资不足而瘫痪。
我认为这种程度的不平等简直令人愤慨。这就是为什么我很自豪能成为 120 位百万富翁之一——与加里·利尼克（Gary Lineker）、编剧理查德·柯蒂斯（Richard Curtis）、小说家瓦尔·麦克德米德（Val McDermid）以及前城市交易员加里·史蒂文森（Gary Stevenson）等人一起——签署了一封致我们新任首相的信，要求他和新组建的政府对最富有的人征收更多税款。我们负担得起，这个国家值得这样做，这里的民众也值得这样做。
除了道德层面的理由，还有一个非常清晰的社会和经济理由。越来越多在职的人发现，他们无法通过日常工作维持生计，并且无法想象他们的孩子将如何获得比他们更好的生活。这是一个可怕的趋势：在这个国家，变得更富有的唯一途径是你首先得拥有财富。
人们存在一种错误的假设，认为所有富人都希望尽可能少缴税；认为他们看不到所缴纳的税款所带来的巨大投资和收益。
但尽管如此，我们仍然优先对那些深陷无休止生活成本危机的人的收入征税，而对顶层那些不产生效益的财富征税不足。63% 的税收来自劳动和消费，而仅有 4% 来自资本。
人们存在一种错误的假设，认为所有富人都希望尽可能少缴税；认为他们看不到所缴纳的税款所带来的巨大投资和收益。我可以代表我自己，以及我在“爱国百万富翁”（Patriotic Millionaires）组织中所接触的许多其他富人告诉你，这完全不属实。Survation 在今年早些时候进行的民意调查也描绘了同样的景象：88 的英国百万富翁表示他们为生活在英国感到自豪，且 75 愿意支付更高的税款来保护他们所自豪的事物。
关于这一点，共识正在增加。当 75 的英国公众希望看到对最具支付能力的人征收更高税款时；当我们的公共服务和基础设施需要投资时；当我们的个体企业需要必要支持时；以及当百万富翁们自己也在呼吁时，还有什么能阻止我们充满希望的新政府对超级富豪征税？
我全心希望我们的新内阁会提高我的税收以及对最富有者的税收。我们请求您，首相：在您下放政治权力的时候，您也应该重新分配经济权力。少数人手中闲置的极端财富应该被用来减少不平等，投资于可持续就业，加强医院、学校和社会护理，支持创业者获得所需的技能和基础设施，并让小企业能够获得负担得起的融资。
我们的财富是我们国家的秘密武器。让我们认真地利用它。
Voices
通过建立一个新的国际机构来推动全球贸易摆脱对美元的依赖，将直接损害美国消费者的钱包——而且这将成为一名不循规蹈矩的总统所需要的冲击，肖恩·奥格雷迪（Sean O'Grady）如是说。
在马克·卡尼（Mark Carney）的领导下，加拿大正遭受唐纳德·特朗普虚假关税的沉重打击 (AFP/Getty)
人们不禁要问，唐纳德·特朗普什么时候在意过“强迫劳动”？这个词略显古老，现在我们通常将其视为“现代奴隶制”。
正如我们现在所知，直到白宫的一组精干的档案员和律师在 1974 年的《美国贸易法》中发现了一个条款，才给了他一个理由——或者说一个借口——重新实施一大批在今年二月被最高法院废除的关税。
从那时起，他不得不运行在临时关税制度下，而这些关税现在到期了。因此出现了新的进口税。
虽然无需赘言，但还是得指出，在英国、日本、韩国、加拿大、欧盟和其他西方经济体中，“强迫劳动”在经济的任何地方都不是一种普遍现象。特朗普政府还没有提供任何证据表明，正如 1974 年法律所述，这种“不合理”的用工实践被那些此前被视为自由且运行正常的民主政府所容忍，更不用说被鼓励了。
正如美国立法所规定，英国政府并非一个“允许任何形式的强迫或强制劳动”的国家，它是清白的。当然，我们有自己的问题，偶尔也会有起诉案件；但这尚未成为英国社会的特征。在路虎（Range Rover）工厂里没有血汗工厂，也没有通过这种手段恶意压低美国自豪工人的竞争力。
事实上，目前世界上最令人触目惊心的强迫劳动行径，是特朗普的朋友弗拉基米尔·普京强征俄罗斯青年，将他们送往乌克兰走向必然的死亡。
因此，特朗普一夜之间宣布的新关税简直是无稽之谈。
这些关税一如既往地荒谬——而且，如果一个人能信任美国的法律体系，它们应该像之前的关税一样被废除。但这无法阻止“特朗普团队”构思出某种新的虚假行政命令，让整个可悲的循环再次开始。所以，我们不得不忍受它们。
关于特朗普在去年四月发起的关税战，令人惊讶的是，它们对世界贸易的损害并没有人们担心的那么严重。所发生的是贸易模式的调整，而非贸易量的减少。
加拿大人再次发现自己成为了被挑剔的对象，遭受了更加离奇且可疑的对待。原因几乎不重要，因为特朗普根本不认为加拿大应该是一个独立国家，而和解的可能性也微乎其微。很快，旧的《北美自由贸易协定》的残余（现为 USMCA，该协定曾被证明对美国、墨西哥和加拿大互利共赢）将被扫除。
我们本不应该习惯于这种荒谬之举，但随着美国现在成为一个不循规蹈矩的国家，关税战的最新转折必须被应对，就像应对北约的解体，以及美国现在在曾经的盟友国家（但现在被视为处于“文明衰落”状态的近敌）中资助的具有分裂性的文化战争一样。
由于加拿大处于这场经济战争的前线——距离全面制裁仅一步之遥——回想几个月前加拿大总理马克·卡尼在达沃斯论坛上指出的观点是恰当的。
他谈到了“世界秩序的破裂，一个美好虚构的终结和一个残酷现实的开始，在那里，地缘政治，即大国主导的地缘政治，不受任何限制，没有任何约束……
“另一方面，我想告诉你们，其他国家，特别是像加拿大这样的中等强国，并非无能为力。它们有能力建立一个涵盖我们价值观的新秩序，例如尊重人权、可持续发展、团结、以及各国的主权和领土完整。”
特朗普在去年 4 月发起的关税战令人惊讶的一点是，它们并没有像人们担心的那样严重损害世界贸易。所发生的是贸易模式的调整而非贸易量的减少，进出口被转向那些仍然对自由贸易所带来的经济增长和生活水平提升感兴趣的国家。
我们知道，世界贸易组织 (WTO) 现在已经可怜地陷入停滞，是时候建立一个新的贸易组织了，该组织应涵盖西方中介国家、充满活力的新兴市场以及新的贸易超级大国——印度和中国。如果你愿意，可以将其视为一个没有美国的 WTO。
特朗普可能会以关税进行报复。但考虑到关税对美国消费者的伤害最大，这在现实中可能并不构成太大的威胁。此外，新的国际贸易机构也可以采取对等措施，并开始推动全球贸易去美元化，迫使美国人量入为出。正如卡尼 (Carney) 所主张的，一个新的世界秩序无论如何都在向我们袭来。我们不妨现在就开始设计它。这样我们可能会过得更好。
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观点
随着伯尼·桑德斯继续赢得人心，而纽约的佐兰·马姆达尼 (Zohran Mamdani) 紧随其后，
乔恩·索佩尔 (Jon Sopel) 表示，民主党的氛围十分乐观，但美国中西部地区并不买账
随着特朗普将美国和共和党进一步推向右翼，像马姆达尼这样的人物则将方向拉向另一边 (@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social)
恰好 10 年前，民主党人在费城集会，推举希拉里·克林顿作为他们 2016 年总统大选的候选人。最终，在经历了艰苦且充满痛苦的竞争后，她击败了伯尼·桑德斯的挑战，后者是来自佛蒙特州、自称民主社会主义者的参议员。
在他参选之前，他在本州之外几乎没什么名气。他有点特立独行。他的说话方式与其说是交谈，不如说是咆哮。他显得非常暴躁。他的政治主张远比民主党建制派激进。从理论上讲，他应该是一个不切实际的失败者。但他的得票数与克林顿非常接近，而且在试图抹黑他的种种努力中，产生了大量积怨。
那一周在费城，我遇到了一些代表，他们说与其投票给希拉里·克林顿，他们宁愿投票给唐纳德·特朗普。这就是政治的“马蹄形理论”——在许多政策上，比如关税、保护美国就业机会和经济民族主义，特朗普和桑德斯之间的距离并不遥远。
这一现象是真实存在的。桑德斯在全国巡演，在集会中吸引了大量主要由年轻人组成的人群。但当时的桑德斯几乎是孤军奋战。并没有一个真正意义上的进步民主社会主义运动。只有桑德斯一个人。
正如特朗普将共和党带向民粹右翼一样，桑德斯将民主党带向了民粹左翼；带向了“蓝色 MAGA”之地。我在费城遇到的一位女性拿着横幅，宣称希拉里赢得了她的选票，但伯尼赢得了她的心。
快进到今天，人们越来越感觉到，伯尼式进步政治品牌已经俘获了更多数百万人的心。虽然伯尼·桑德斯已不再是当年的那种力量——他现在 84 岁了——但现在有一批身处要职的超级明星政治家正在倡导这种更为左翼的世界观。
其中最突出的是纽约市长 Zohran Mamdani，他的获胜激励了该党的进步派翼。最近，他要求如果本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在9月出席联合国大会而踏入纽约，应因战争罪被逮捕——而唐纳德·特朗普对此不屑一顾。
民主党中令人惊叹的是，在10月7日发生惨剧后，对以色列的支持程度有所下降。有些人呼吁禁止向这个犹太国家出售武器。这是一个深刻的转变。
其他一些政策方案对欧洲观众来说可能并不那么激进。自1948年起，在就诊时提供免费医疗一直是英国医疗体系的基石，但在美国，这通常被视为类似于共产主义。Mamdani 所倡导的租金冻结，在右翼看来是对自由市场运作的巨大干预。但他使其变得受欢迎。
问题在于，虽然 Mamdani 在纽约倡导的这类政策可能在较为自由、受过大学教育的选民中很受欢迎——但在决定选举结果的那些摇摆州（如密歇根州、宾夕法尼亚州、威斯康星州、乔治亚州和亚利桑那州），这些政策会如何被接受？
此外，人们一直在努力寻找不符合刻板印象的候选人，即那些像模具一样刻出来的、下颌方正、衣着考究的常春藤盟校校友。
一名在费城投票给希拉里，但对来自佛蒙特州的参议员持有特别好感的选民（Jon Sopel）
在缅因州——民主党争夺参议院的主要目标地之一——民主党选出了一位名为 Graham Platner 的进步派前牡蛎渔民。他是一块原钻。他得到了 Mamdani 和 Sanders 的支持，击败了建制派心仪的人选，获得了民主党的提名。
然而事实证明，他的过去比格子桌布还要斑驳复杂。曾有一项性侵指控——他称该指控是“虚假的”；他曾在海军陆战队服役期间刻了一个纹身，看起来非常像纳粹德国 SS 军官的“骷髅头”（totenkopf）标志——他随后为此道歉并将其去除，称当时并未意识到其相似性。关于其行为可疑的指控接踵而至。
他被迫退出竞选，导致民主党不得不仓促寻找新候选人。但这样一个候选人，怎么可能曾经被认为合适且恰当？
他并非个例。在一次纽约国会席位竞选中，该党选择了一位名叫 Darializa Avila Chevalier 的女性。她此前曾称乔·拜登为“强奸犯”和“战争罪犯”。她随后表示“后悔”发布过这些推文。在哈马斯屠杀以色列平民的次日，她参加了纽约的一场庆祝杀戮的集会。
在密歇根州（美国阿拉伯人口最多的州）正进行着一场民主党初选，这场对决是老牌民主党建制派候选人 Haley Stevens 与进步派反叛者 Abdul El Sayed 之间的较量。亲以色列游说组织 AIPAC 已投入数百万美元以阻止 El Sayed。El Sayed 的支持者将此定格为基层力量与大游说资金的对抗。
伯尼·桑德斯的受欢迎程度，导致一批其他进步派人士竞选参议院和国会议员（路透社）
这一切都导致白宫内部的氛围变得剑拔弩张，目前那里正全力以赴地将这些人——而不仅仅是这些个人，而是整个民主党——描绘成激进的、目光狂乱的共产主义疯子。特朗普的首席宣传员斯蒂芬·米勒认为，他们将废除宪法，禁止法官，并杀掉长子。好吧，最后一部分是我编的。但以下是他对美国未来景象描述的某种基调：
“民主党不仅接纳了社会主义，他们还接纳了共产主义。纯粹的、露骨的、大声疾呼的共产主义。他们现在选出的候选人想要接管私营工业，将其交给政府，暂停宪法，废除参议院，废除监狱，废除拘留所，废除陪审团制度，废除我们的整个生活方式。”
太夸张了？确实。但仍有许多老派民主党人担心，这批超进步派候选人可能会在 11 月的中期选举中付出沉重代价。
话又说回来，10 年前的建制派共和党人也曾说，如果让像特朗普这样的人领衔候选名单，他们的政党绝不可能获胜。这次中期选举将不会是一场争夺中间地带的战斗。
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商业/评论
虽然目前的关注点是那些未接受教育、未就业或未接受培训的年轻人，但亟需关注那些正值中年、失业且距离领取养老金仍有 10 年以上时间的人群。
克里斯·布莱克赫斯特（Chris Blackhurst）撰文
斯泰西·杜古伊德（Stacey Duguid）因讲述她的失业之耻以及 AI 如何特别歧视年长女性而走红（Andrew Woffinden）
我们都熟悉 Neets（尼特族）。我们通常将这个词定义为未接受教育、未就业或未接受培训的年轻人。但我们是否应该扩大这个词的范畴，将年长群体也纳入其中？
前时尚编辑斯泰西·杜古伊德在求职困难期间发布的社交媒体帖文触动了大众的一根敏感神经。这位 52 岁的女性讨论了成为“不可雇佣者”的“沉默之耻”，讲述了在过去的 16 个月里，她投递了 150 份工作申请却毫无结果。她不仅被拒绝，而且大多数申请根本没有得到回复。“钱快花光了，我很害怕。如果我处于这种境地，也许你们也是？”
从她收到的海量回复来看，这种犹豫是没有必要的——有非常多的人与她处于同一境地，其中许多是女性。这并不奇怪，因为官方研究显示，在英国，50 到 64 岁的女性中有 30% 处于经济非活跃状态，而男性这一比例为 22%。
那些给杜古伊德提供建议的人建议她去掉年龄，这样 AI（如今简历越来越多地通过 AI 审核）就不会自动将她屏蔽。她必须比这更委婉，不仅要避开披露那个暴露年龄的数字或出生日期，还要删除长达 20 年的工作经历，希望这样就不会被识破。但并没有好结果，她仍在等待。
杜古伊德的痛苦经历在网络上广泛传播。她的所作所为凸显了一个日益严重的社会和经济问题，即人们需要继续工作才能维持生存，这不仅关乎经济，还关乎身心健康。
与此同时，官方退休年龄正被进一步推迟。一个 50 岁被裁员的人，在领取国家养老金之前还面临近 20 年的等待期（对于 1960 年 4 月 6 日至 1977 年 4 月 5 日之间出生的人，退休年龄从 66 岁提高到 67 岁；而对于 1977 年 4 月 5 日之后出生的人，预计将升至 68 岁）。
年长的工作者不得不通过计算，来规划如何让日益减少的资金维持到退休 (Getty/iStock)
与此同时，来自下方年轻群体的就业压力也在增加。64 岁曾被认为是最高工作年龄，而如今退休的截止线已被推高。政府在延长一端的工作寿命，而与此同时，得益于艾伦·米尔本 (Alan Milburn) 最近关于 NEETS（不就业、不教育、不培训青年）的里程碑式报告，政府不得不面对另一端的危机。
一些开明的雇主意识到 50 岁以上的人群有许多贡献，并乐于雇用他们。然而，对于许多这个年龄段的求职者来说，除了重新培训、创业或成为个体经营者之外，别无选择。根据国家统计局的数据，英国 48 per cent 的自雇人士年龄在 50 岁或以上。55/Redefined（一家推广招聘和留用年长员工的咨询公司）的首席执行官林赛·辛普森 (Lyndsey Simpson) 表示：“这是十年来最高比例，在过去 10 年中增长了 18 per cent。”
目前，一个为人们提供职业转换、重新培训、成为“组合式”工作者或独立创业建议的行业正日益兴起。
对于许多人来说，这说起来容易做起来难，因为他们自离开学校或大学起，就一直处于一个行业，可能走在一条路径上，甚至在同一个雇主那里担任同一个职位。
同样困难的是，当他们习惯了领取一份薪水，而现在却要进入一份薪水较低的工作，或者面临寻找资金支付培训课程并实际上从头开始的局面。除非拥有配偶的独立支持或家庭财富，否则对于许多人来说，重新培训和从零开始的梦想是遥不可及的。
如果他们只是申请新职位，正如达古伊德 (Duguid) 所发现的，AI 会将他们过滤掉，因为他们被认为太老了。在这些情况下，人们倾向于指责 AI，仿佛机器人是独立运行的。事实并非如此；算法是由人类编写的；是人在给计算机编程。正是这些人需要被鼓励摒弃年龄歧视，并更加认可一名 50 多岁的员工能提供的东西。
人们认为自己还年轻，有很多贡献能力，且需要工作，但相反，他们被告知太老了，不被需要，被轻视，并且找不到工作。
同样，这也不太容易实现，因为年长者可能对技术不那么熟悉，可能固守旧习，习惯于以某种方式工作，而且坦率地说，可能不太愿意接受年轻人的指示或被告知该怎么做。他们之前的工作可能已经达到了较高的资历级别，因此难以适应截然不同的环境。
与此同时，他们可能还需要应对高龄阶段生活带来的所有其他问题，从照顾年迈的亲属、资助子女和孙辈的学费，到处理与年龄相关的疾病。
当然，他们可能觉得自己比实际年龄更年轻。RBC财富管理公司的一项新分析发现，情况普遍如此：在英国，72% 的 45 至 75 岁人群表示，他们感觉自己的年龄比实际年龄年轻，平均年轻 9 岁。因此，60 岁的人认为自己是 51 岁。许多人（35%）认为他们最好的时光还在后面（在受访者中，超过十分之一，即 13% 的人认为自己很可能会活到 100 岁）。
这就是一种导致极度沮丧的 recipe（配方）。人们认为自己更年轻，有许多能够贡献的价值，且需要工作，但相反，他们被告知太老了，不被需要，被轻视，且找不到工作。
就像解决离校者和毕业生所面临的问题没有神奇公式一样，对于那些在职业阶梯另一端掉下来的人来说，也没有神奇公式。两者都需要大量使用类似的“药物”：更多的培训课程，更多技术技能的指导，以及更多激励老板雇用他们担任永久职位的措施。这需要资金和不断增长的经济，这两者相辅相成，而目前都处于短缺状态。
作为开始，米尔本（Milburn）应该在他的优秀论文中增加一个补充章节，研究 50 岁以上的 Neets（不就业也不在校的人）。要快，因为就像他报告中所涵盖的人群一样，对于这一群体，时间在流逝，受影响的人数也在稳步增加。
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体育/英联邦运动会
Mark Staniforth
[[IMG_XXXX]] Adam Ramsay-Peaty 昨天在格拉斯哥参加预赛（路透社）
三届奥运金牌得主 Adam Ramsay-Peaty 在昨天的男子 100 米蛙泳半决赛中以 59.19 的成绩获胜。同样来自英国的 Gregory Butler 获得第三名，也以 1.00.12 的成绩晋级决赛。来自泽西岛的 Filip Nowacki 以 59.52 秒的成绩获得第二名。
此前，Ramsay-Peaty 撇开一次离奇的延迟，强力闯入在格拉斯哥举行的英联邦运动会男子 100 米蛙泳项目的半决赛。
Ramsay-Peaty 参加的预赛组暂时中断，当时他已在起跳台上，而一条泳道分隔线脱落，需要一名官员进行清理
[[IMG_XXXX]] 涉及 Adam Peaty（未在图中）的预赛开始时间被推迟（盖蒂图片社）
Ramsay-Peaty 随即迅速记录了早晨最快的时间，为 59.46 秒，只有两名对手——澳大利亚的 Sam Williamson 和泽西岛的 Filip Nowacki 同样在 1 分钟内完赛。
这位三届奥运冠军正在参加他的第四届英联邦运动会，他早在 2014 年于格拉斯哥 19 岁时就赢得了首批奖牌。
自那时起，他在去年 12 月与名厨戈登（Gordon）的女儿 Holly Ramsay 结婚，并与大多数家人产生裂痕后，成为了八卦专栏的常客。
Ramsay-Peaty 将这次运动会描述为一次“圆满回归”，因为他希望重新点燃自己的职业生涯。在经历了一个困难的 2023 年（期间他为了关注心理健康问题而退出了一系列赛事）后，他在 2024 年巴黎奥运会上获得的一枚银牌帮助他重新找回重心。
[[IMG_XXXX]] Adam Ramsay-Peaty 在格拉斯哥的 100 米预赛中轻松晋级（路透社）
他在 2014 年 100 米项目中的胜利开启了在该项目上近八年的绝对统治。这段连胜在四年前的伯明翰以戏剧性的方式结束，当时他在该项目中出人意料地仅获得第四名。
Ramsay-Peaty 告诉 TNT Sports：“任务完成了，真的。接下来的两周会很忙，所以我们在可能的情况下预留体力。上次我在这里时还很年轻，当时我名下几乎没有世界纪录，或者说没有广为人知的世界纪录，所以这是一段非常漫长的旅程。”
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体育/足球
威尔·卡斯尔（Will Castle）写道，在俱乐部采取“先封禁后询问”的手段严厉打击票贩子后，曼联让季票持有者们感到自己是可以被随意抛弃的。
数百名曼联季票持有者的账户在一次打击行动后被限制（盖蒂图片社）
认识一下鲁埃里（Ruairi）。他是一个六岁的曼联球迷，对足球极其痴迷。他住在球场五分钟路程的地方，已经是斯特雷特福德看台（Stretford End）的常客。在今年早些时候 2-1 战胜水晶宫的比赛中，他担任了吉祥物；他还随队前往塞维利亚、伊斯坦堡和毕尔巴鄂观看客场比赛。
这个六岁的超级粉丝现在竟然被怀疑在倒卖门票。在俱乐部进行的一项广泛调查中，他的账户已被限制，等待审查。他那张珍贵的季票的前途现在悬而未决。
鲁埃里并不是票贩子。
“这简直是丑闻，”他的母亲凯特（Kate）告诉《独立报》，她已经持有季票 19 年了。“这件事带来了巨大的焦虑。我们不能告诉儿子他不能去曼联看球了。这就是我们的生活，是我们的一切。我是在那里遇到我丈夫的。这是我们每个周末作为家庭成员共同做的事情。他对此着迷。”
他的父亲加里（Gary）补充道：“如果我们告诉他不能去现场看球，他会崩溃的。绝对会崩溃。”
在过去几天里，据报道已有数千名忠实的现场支持者陷入了类似的噩梦，而鲁埃里的经历只是其中之一。这些声称数十年随队在整个欧洲大陆奔波的球迷们深感焦虑，他们表示，由于一些绝非票贩子所独有的原因，他们面临着失去每周生活中如此重要一部分活动的风险。
鲁埃里与母亲凯特和父亲加里（《独立报》）
鲁埃里的情况在社交媒体的狂热氛围中引起了极大的关注。截至发稿时，凯特讲述他困境的帖子已有 1.9 million 人阅读。随着球迷们抛弃了任何形式的派系之争，反应是一致的：愤怒。
曼联并非恶意针对一名六岁儿童——没有人这样指控。相反，剔除票贩子的手段正受到严厉审视。俱乐部认为，只有在出现与票贩子行为一致的技术异常时，才会联系受影响的支持者——但曼联被如曼联支持者信托基金（MUST）等支持者团体指责，在造成巨大的恐慌和压力之前，并没有对此进行进一步调查，而是采用了“先封禁后询问”的流程。
《独立报》看到的一封内容几乎完全相同的邮件已被曼联发送给数百名球迷，俱乐部在信中称，他们发现了“与您的票务账户访问相关的模式”
针对显示您的账户被第三方访问或管理的活动说明，且该第三方似乎还访问了至少 6 个其他曼联票务账户；或者说明您为何访问或管理了至少 6 个其他账户。 一份您经常用于访问账户的设备列表。 确认您的账户是否从多个地点访问，如果是，请提供这些地点的详细信息。 关于您的账户通常如何被访问和管理的简短说明。 一份有效的带照片身份证明副本，用于账户验证目的。验证后该副本将不会被存档。
“我们无法申请去赫尔（Hull）的客场比赛，所以无论你是否愿意使用‘禁赛’这个词，你已经禁赛了我六岁的孩子，因为他现在无法申请赫临客场赛了，”凯特愤怒地表示，而申诉过程预计至少需要一个月。“他……”
在鲁埃里（Ruairi）的案例中，凯特声称这一异常情况源于她登录了儿子的账户。在她可以访问的家人和朋友的 11 个账户中，这是其中之一，其中许多人共享登录信息——背景情况是，任何将登录凭证提供给 6 个以上不同的人员都被曼联标记了。他们都坐在斯特雷特福德看台（Stretford End）同一个“助威区”，为了营造氛围而特意安排在一起。她在申诉中详细描述了这一点。
但在审核之前，他的账户——与所有其他账户一样——已被限制。这还不是一项处罚，也不是彻底的禁赛，曼联坚持称他们“并未假设有任何违规行为”。不过，在英超赛季的第一天，感觉绝不会是这样的。
Must 内部认为目前采取的全面行动完全是不成比例的。“实际上是在禁赛人们，并要求他们证明自己不该被禁赛……这违背了所有的自然正义，”一名发言人说道。
Must 已向《独立报》（The Independent）确认，它一直在与俱乐部进行每日私人会议，试图“缓解”一名发言人所描述的“针对核心球迷群体的战争”。它渴望通过协作来根除黄牛这一“共同敌人”，黄牛行为困扰着这项运动，并给绝大多数常规球迷带来了最沉重的打击。但它认为，曼联坚持认为没有任何票务流程需要支持者访问他人的账户，曼联必须改变处理该问题的态度。
停赛意味着鲁埃里将错过曼联本赛季在赫尔的首场客场比赛（Getty）
“我们正试图帮助他们理解什么是‘正常的球迷行为’，”该发言人补充道。“球迷群体确实会共享……”
无论这些努力是否会导致俱乐部妥协，这次糟糕的事件已导致曼联那些“经常被代表不足”的现场观赛支持者中再次出现不信任的激增——因为钱不是从他们那里来的。
在曼联于上季前引入的新分类票务系统（不同比赛价格不同）下，季票与出售给普通会员的 19 张英超主场单场门票之间的价格差异，已从微小变为数百英镑。如果标准座位被转换为款待席（hospitality seating）——正如上赛季前在爵士鲍比·查尔顿看台发生的情况，当时约 500 名季票持有者被迁移——潜在利润将达到天文数字。尽管有 25 年的等待名单，俱乐部近年来减少了季票配额——从 2019 年的 53,000 张左右减少到现在的约 47,000 张——人们担心这部分群体会被进一步削减。
“100% 如此，他们不想要我们，”凯特断言。“他们不想要工人阶级球迷，不想要标准的季票持有者，这很可惜，因为直到事情发生，他们才会意识到我们才是这个俱乐部的灵魂。”
必须坚持认为，无论俱乐部的条款和条件如何，家人和朋友之间共享对方票务账户的登录信息是“正常的球迷行为”（Getty）
Must 补充称，一直以来人们“怀疑俱乐部想要减少季票持有者的数量”。
曼联的消息人士向《独立报》反驳了这些说法，强调该流程并非为了增加收入，也不是为了减少季票数量。俱乐部保证，任何被取消的季票都将重新发放给候补名单上的人，或持有杯赛季票的人。
而且值得注意的是，红魔绝非唯一一家受到此类批评的俱乐部。在 M62 公路另一端，激烈的竞争对手利物浦也面临类似的观点，其安菲尔德路看台的扩建工程中，分配给款待服务的额外席位几乎是季票席位的两倍。
就在曼联陷入与核心支持者群体的冲突时，利物浦宣布，在与默西赛德郡警方进行联合调查后，已从有组织的票务黄牛手中没收了 £1.2m 的资金，该调查导致 432 人被终身禁赛，115 人被无限期禁赛——其中 65 人与季票持有者有关。
这被宣传为打击黄牛战争的一次重大胜利。考虑到目前在老特拉福德发生的事情，不能责怪人们产生怀疑。
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体育/足球
尤尔根·克洛普的任务是在国家队经历最近一次世界杯失望之行后对其进行重建——但威尔·卡斯尔发现，他目前没有妥协的意愿
克洛普昨天告诉媒体，让他们离他的家人远点，否则他将辞职（Getty）
尤尔根·克洛普本可以安于现状，让数百万的评论员酬金滚滚而来。这位教练席上的魅力之王在世界杯期间与托马斯·穆勒一起，非常无缝地完成了向电视转播的过渡——这位前德国前锋对短视频（Reels）的痴迷，标志着他从足球运动员到演艺人员的永久转型已不远。
但克洛普的个性在德国足球版图中一个更严肃的领域中会发挥更好的作用。
在球队因在世界杯 32 强赛中惨败给巴拉圭而舔舐伤口之际，自 2014 年夺冠以来，他们一直未能赢得一场淘汰赛。朱利安·纳格尔斯曼未能像之前的汉西·弗里克那样激励这个国家的国家队——这两位都是战术狂热者，客观上也是优秀的教练，但仅此而已。他们缺乏某种……气场。
克洛普没有这个问题。在他执教过的三家俱乐部中，他离开时都被神格化了，而且理由充分——无论他走到哪里，都能开启一个新的光荣时代。他带领美因茨历史上首次进入德甲；在多特蒙德七年未能进入前四之后，他带领球队连续赢得冠军；在利物浦，他唤醒了一个沉睡的巨人，赢得了所有能赢的奖杯，包括 30 年来首个英超冠军。
他摇滚风格的足球让任何由他执教的球队都很容易获得支持。“在排名中，有 11 个国家在我们前面——但我们必须通过我们的足球打法，让击败他们成为可能，”克洛普在正式公布其作为纳格尔斯曼继任者的新闻发布会上誓言道。在德国队掌舵多年平庸之后，仅他的出现就将为这个停滞的体制注入生命力。
克洛普十年来一直是德国队的理想人选。他被构想为约阿希姆·勒夫的继任者，接手该
他所打造的夺冠之师，以及如何让他们维持在顶峰。 但这并非克洛普的风格——在他的职业生涯中，没有任何一个时刻他是在接手一项维护工作；他始终是在重建和革新。这也是为什么关于他加盟皇家马德里或拜仁慕尼黑的持续传闻对他来说始终不合适的原因。
电视之星：克洛普在世界杯期间担任评论员 (Getty)
现在德国需要他了，他从红牛资助的沉睡中苏醒过来。“我做这份工作不是为了我自己。我是为了你们，”他说道，利用了这种“救世主”的噱头。
他不再是那个在西格纳伊度鲁姆球场统治德国足球的男人；首先，他现在有了新牙齿和新眼睛。他的墙上还安装了一个大得多的奖杯陈列柜。但他的个性基本没变，只是在如此成功之后，多了一份自信的从容。
随之而来的个性是某种不稳定性；他是一个不惧怕冒犯他人的人。他绝非被所有人喜爱；对手球迷早已厌倦了他的抱怨、借口以及被认为受裁判偏袒的行为。最近，他在
故乡因接受红牛全球足球主管一职而遭遇激烈的抵制和“背叛者”的指责，德国球迷蔑视该组织的多俱乐部模式，以及对 50+1 规则的有效规避，而该规则保证了支持者在俱乐部中的投票权。
因此，他的德国队亮相并非全是拥抱与亲吻。克洛普甚至向该国的媒体和公众发出警告：他将不会容忍过去 12 年里这个职位的“诅咒”。
“尽管我看到了你们如何对待朱利安·纳格尔斯曼，我依然接手这份工作，”他直截了当地说。“尽管我看到了你们如何对待托马斯·图赫尔，我依然接手。”
克洛普：“理想情况下，这将是我职业生涯的高光时刻” (AP)
“在你们不再需要我的那天，我会离开——不需要任何遣散费。如果你明天说他很烂，我就走。不仅仅是一个人，得是更多的人。如果 DFB [德国足协] 说他很烂，我就走。
“如果你们行为不端，不让我的家人平静生活，我就走。如果某些事情没做好，请批评我。我很乐意去改进。一切都是为了工作。”
这种不含糊的态度将延伸到更衣室和训练场。德国队在淘汰赛压力下表现不佳，反映出该体系文化中一种阴郁的转变。在他的体制下，任何不是“心态怪物”的人肯定无法长期生存。
但克洛普无法独自一人振兴德国队。他将围绕前利物浦助理教练佩普·利因德斯和彼得·克拉维茨构建教练组，试图复制他在安菲尔德的辉煌。在瓜迪奥拉与意大利队洽谈期间，人们曾幻想这场宿敌之战能在国际赛场上重启，但这位加泰罗尼亚人最终拒绝了保罗·马尔蒂尼等人。
带领他的国家重返全球之巅，感觉像是克洛普辉煌职业生涯的正确终点。无论他是实现了这一目标，还是仅仅掩盖了缺陷，这将是他执教生涯的最后一站。“尤尔根·克洛普在国家队之后就没有职业生涯了。理想情况下，这将是我职业生涯的高光时刻。”
当他们在 9 月的第一场比赛中遇到传统对手荷兰队时，我们将首次窥见克洛普的这个童话故事是否能成真。在 Euro 2028, 欧洲杯，在那个他作为红军主帅所征服的国家，他的历史地位将面临考验。
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体育/一级方程式赛车
T
两届世界冠军费尔南多·阿隆索已处于退休边缘，但仍期待最后一次由阿德里安·纽威打造的奇迹赛车，Kieran Jackson 报道
现年 44, 岁的这位西班牙人正处于他的第 23 个 F1 赛季 (Reuters)
人们说眼见为实。而在上周末斯帕-弗朗科尚赛道的排位赛积分榜上，特别是第一阶段，确实需要一些信念才能相信自己的眼睛。
对于一支底线目标是在 2026, 年成为一级方程式世界冠军竞争者的车队来说，阿斯顿·马丁的前 10 场比赛简直是一场灾难。从澳大利亚赛季揭幕战中出现的“神经损伤”安全担忧，到无数次的动力单元故障，阿斯顿与本田的新伙伴关系极其糟糕。更糟糕的是，他们之前使用的是梅赛德斯引擎，而这在赛车运动进入这个全新的、专注于电能的 era. 中是绝对最强大的。
而且在上一场比利时大奖赛的 Q1 赛段中，阿斯顿车手费尔南多·阿隆索和兰斯·斯特罗尔都比下一辆最慢的车（新车队凯迪拉克）慢了两秒多，并且比领先者慢了四秒多。他们的单圈时间更接近 107 per cent 的时间限制——即参赛所需的最低时间——而非杆位时间。
目前处于 F1 职业生涯第 23 个赛季的阿隆索并不掩饰他的心愿，他依然留在这项运动中，是希望阿斯顿能为他提供一辆能够赢得第三个世界冠军的赛车，在他用雷诺赛车连续夺冠二十年后实现此目标。然而，正相反，这位 44 岁的车手在过去几个月里一直在后方绝望地挣扎。这一景象令人痛心。
令人敬佩的是，这位西班牙人仍然抱有希望，认为伟大的阿德里安·纽维能为他创造最后一个奇迹。“这需要时间，但我毫不怀疑阿德里安迟早会提供全场最强的赛车，”阿隆索在周四、即夏季休赛期前的最后一站匈牙利大奖赛前表示。“我想看看这个套件的第一步成效。”
阿斯顿·马丁在本赛季至今一直绝望地处于末尾 (Getty)
虽然早已迟到，但本周末来到匈牙利赛道的是一个巨大的升级套件。阿斯顿在周五上午确认，他们的升级版赛车包含 16 —— 没错，就是 16 个 —— 不同的部件，包括前翼、后翼、侧箱、底板和后悬挂。
这基本上是一辆新车。围场中的议论暗示，这可能会在每圈提升高达一秒的性能，虽然阿斯顿若想在顶端挑战还需要比这多得多的提升，但这将代表一次巨大的飞跃。
初步印象如何？并不太好。斯特罗尔在 FP1 中因后悬挂问题打转出局，该问题非常严重，以至于他无法参加当天随后的第二次练习赛。而阿隆索在 FP2 中的最快圈速仅排名 P19。真正的证明将在今天的排位赛中揭晓。
“布达佩斯对我们来说是一个友好的赛道，”阿隆索在周四表示。“动力在这里不是最重要的，但我们更新了赛车，还没有更新引擎。我正逐渐进入状态，了解赛车的方向，以及我们是否在正确的路径上”
由于阿隆索已经承认他将在 8 月休赛期间认真考虑自己的未来——他的合同将在赛季末到期——本周末对于阿斯顿能否留住其明星车手至关重要。事实上，这是最后的尝试机会。
“很显然，我们很快就意识到自己在早期的几场比赛中将不具备竞争力，”纽维三周前在银石赛道表示。“我们做出了一个痛苦但我认为正确的决定，在今年上半年不对赛车进行任何开发。我们知道这意味着，随着其他车队不断开发，我们与领先者的差距实际上会进一步扩大。”
兰斯·斯特罗尔和阿隆索在前 10 场比赛中表现不佳 (Getty)
“但这是为了让我们能更好地组织，为未来建立许多不同的系统，并真正地进行恰当的研究，因为 26 年赛车的研发时间表非常具有竞争力。”
“所以，这使我们能够稍微后退一步，减轻一些压力，因为我认为我们在冬季确实给了自己太大的压力。现在我们可以深呼吸，真正地去理解我们的问题，以及我们需要实现的目标，[通过] 这个升级方案，我们将第一阶段在匈牙利实施，第二阶段在赞德福特（夏季休赛后的首场比赛）实施。”
当然，本田在动力单元方面也必须采取行动。尽管十年前在迈凯伦驾驶本田赛车的经历糟糕，但阿隆索坚持认为这“毫无疑问”会发生。这家日本公司是否真的能追上其他制造商——梅赛德斯、法拉利、红牛和奥迪——仍有待观察。
但是，尽管人们喜欢嘲讽，但如果阿斯顿能找回速度，这项运动将获益更多。当真正顶尖的赛车手在前方展开激烈的竞争时，F1 才会是一个更出色的产品。我们在刘易斯·汉密尔顿本赛季的复兴中就看到了这一点。
阿隆索无疑是这些车手之一。而且，无论是因为天真还是真正的希望，他仍然相信纽维能为他提供最后一次辉煌的绝唱，让他心满意足地迎接职业生涯的落幕。值得肯定的是，阿隆索已经坚持这个信念很长时间了。提醒一点：他已经 13 年没有赢得分站冠军了。
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体育
罗德里在率领西班牙赢得世界杯后举起金球奖。这名中场球员一直与离开曼城的传闻联系在一起 (Getty)
马雷斯卡确认罗德里手术细节
恩佐·马雷斯卡已确认罗德里将于周一接受手术，但针对这名西班牙球员可能离开曼城的猜测，他坚称在康复后他“将回到我们身边”。世界杯冠军兼金球奖得主罗德里一直与转会传闻联系在一起，他在今年早些时候曾暗示有可能重返马德里。然而，他目前的重点将是即将进行的一次背部小手术，预计这将使他无法参加英超赛季的开局。
马雷斯卡在担任城队主帅后的首次新闻发布会上表示，他不担心转会传闻，并确认希望在自己的首个赛季留住这名中场球员。“首先我必须说，在顶级球员周围总是存在猜测，所以我并不”
“我不担心那个，”马雷斯卡（Maresca）说道。“我认为这很正常，部分原因是因为他们赢得了世界杯，而且他是一名顶尖球员。我认为任何一名教练都希望拥有罗德里（Rodri），因为他是个顶级球员。但现在，他将在周一进行手术。他需要休假，需要休息和康复，然后他会回到我们身边。”
马雷斯卡承认城市队（City）在转会窗口期间仍有“几件事要做”，但拒绝被卷入关于杰克·格里利什（Jack Grealish）和詹姆斯·特拉福德（James Trafford）未来的讨论。谈到自己离开切尔西时，他表示“没有什么可补充的”，因为切尔西队实际上将他们 2025-26 赛季的糟糕表现归咎于他突然辞职加入城市队。
富里获胜，使与约书亚之战临近
泰森·富里（Tyson Fury）在昨天的一场封闭式怪异比赛中轻松击败了 46 岁的马里乌什·瓦赫（Mariusz Wach）。至此，富里在与安东尼·约书亚（Anthony Joshua）期待已久的对决中又少了一个障碍。瓦赫在泰国进行的一场非电视转播比赛中，在第七轮后在凳子上选择了放弃。这场比赛预计将出现在《与富里一家共处》（At Home With The Furys）第三季中——这是一部关于这位拳击手及其家庭的 Netflix 真实现实秀。
据媒体报道，富里在芭堤雅的 Max Muay Thai 体育馆主导了局面，他在后撤的同时表现出色，并利用刺拳掌控节奏。尽管瓦赫也有其闪光时刻，包括在第二轮中一次似乎让富里感到惊讶的强力右拳，但这位波兰人仍不敌这位英国人。
约书亚定于今天在沙特阿拉伯的吉达超级穹顶（Jeddah Superdome）与不为人知的阿尔巴尼亚选手克里斯蒂安·普伦加（Kristian Prenga）进行比赛。一旦获胜，将促成与富里期待已久的对决，潜在的比赛场地为 11 月的温布利体育场。
汉密尔顿在匈牙利设最快纪录
明天的匈牙利大奖赛。在一级方程式赛车为期三周的夏季休赛期之前，汉密尔顿进入最后一轮比赛时，落后于梅赛德斯的基米·安东内利（Kimi Antonelli） 45 分。
这位英国人在匈牙利赛道（Hungaroring）曾八次夺冠。根据练习赛的证据，他非常有希望获得第九次胜利，因为法拉利在竞争对手面前拥有明显优势。他的队友查尔斯·勒克莱尔（Charles Leclerc）在首轮运行中设定了基准速度，随后汉密尔顿在当天晚些时候回归，最终领先 0.148 秒。世界冠军兰多·诺里斯（Lando Norris）驾驶其麦克拉伦赛车排名第三，且距离较远，落后汉密尔顿半秒。 PA
斯旺开启英格兰金牌冲刺
马克·斯旺（Mark Swan）在男子残疾人举重轻量级类别中取得戏剧性胜利，赢得了英格兰在格拉斯哥英共体运动会上的首枚金牌。斯旺在第二次举起 222 公斤（超过其体重的三倍），在进入最后一轮时与尼日利亚的罗兰·埃祖鲁伊克（Roland Ezuruike）持平。两名运动员在最后一次尝试中均失败，最终根据与运动员各自体重相关的系数计算，斯旺获得金牌。
两届残奥会冠军兼 72 公斤世界纪录保持者、来自马来西亚的邦尼·古斯廷（Bonnie Gustin）获得第三名，仅落后于两名对手 0.4 分。
波加查打破 Alpe d’Huez 纪录
塔代伊·波加查（Tadej Pogacar）在昨日 Tour de France 第 19 赛段中，以纪录时间征服了著名的 Alpe d’Huez 发夹弯，从而扩大了他的总领先优势。这位斯洛文尼亚人在 13.8 公里的爬升过程中用时 35 分 27 秒，打破了由马尔科·潘塔尼（Marco Pantani）在 1997 年创下的 36 分 55 秒的前纪录。
夺得本次环法赛的第五个分站冠军，也是他职业生涯中的第26个。 他在距离终点1.8km处追平了与理查德·卡拉帕斯（Richard Carapaz）和伦尼·马丁内斯（Lenny Martinez）之间三分半钟的差距，并在最后 1,000 米内将其甩在身后。此次比赛使波加查（Pogacar）对雷姆科·伊文波尔（Remco Evenepoel）的总领先时间扩大至七分 11 秒，而后者在最后4km内发起了进攻，以巩固其第二名的位置。PA
詹姆斯加盟76人队开启第24个赛季
勒布朗·詹姆斯（LeBron James）将加盟费城76人队，开启他将刷新纪录的第24个NBA赛季。在关于他NBA未来的猜测盛行数周后，他于昨天在Instagram上发布视频宣布了这一决定。
“这是我的最后一个决定。我不是为了钱，也不是为了家庭。在现阶段，我真正追求的是什么？我仍然想要做出牺牲，仍然想要努力，仍然想要刻苦钻研。我仍然想要竞争，想要获胜，并希望能再次体验夺冠的感觉，”詹姆斯在社交媒体上写道。“我相信我可以帮助费城76人队成为一支冠军球队，我也非常激动能为新的球迷群体注入活力，最后一次开启这段不可思议的旅程。”
据ESPN报道，James, 41, 将与76人队签署一份数额较低的 $8 (£6), 为期两年的合同。他上一赛季的收入近 $53。路透社
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杂志/特写
在为她的最新小说研究 1976 年的热浪之后，夏洛特·爱德华兹（Charlotte Edwardes）反思作家如何利用飙升的气温来改变我们对时间、空间和地点的感知。
英国目前正处于今年的第三次热浪之中——这正造成严重影响 (AFP/Getty)
据报道，1976 年 7 月在威尔士海滩上尖叫着奔跑的孩子们正试图逃离一群恐怖的瓢虫。这些瓢虫尾随在那些在海中嬉水、在沙滩上玩耍的孩子身后，在寻求水分的同时痛苦地叮咬着出汗的皮肤。这是你在 70 年代小说中会看到的那种故事，一种自然秩序的扭曲。因为通常情况下，瓢虫是仁慈的象征；它们是童年时期接触的昆虫，印在习字本上，被剪成彩色纸片贴在游戏小组的墙上，也是童谣的主题。
当传奇的 1976 年热浪在 50 年前袭来时，世界似乎颠倒了。在习惯了阴云和雨水的土地上，太阳连续 16 周剧烈脉动。瓢虫的奇怪行为似乎概括了许多野生动物的迷失方向。一位目击者估计，在距离海岸线四英里内陆的田野里，每英亩有 50,000 只瓢虫在攒动；而在诺福克郡海岸线的上升气流中，滑翔机飞行员在 3,000 英尺的高度与它们相撞，感到十分意外。
1976 年英国的热浪灼伤了人们的感官；人们脱掉上衣并穿上了短裤 (Getty)
瓢虫的袭击是我在为新小说《麻烦来了》（Trouble Was）研究 1976 年夏天时发现的一个细节。小说背景设定在那一年的九个月期间，由九岁的弗兰克（Frank）讲述。他和四岁及两岁的弟妹在母亲的陪伴下，被开车送往北德文郡，与一位父亲方的姑母和三个充满敌意的表亲同住。我还了解到其他一些令人难以置信的细节，比如牛会被晒伤；酒吧里的啤酒被喝光了，而且出现了冰淇淋短缺。在 1976, 之前，成年男性很少穿截短的短裤，这被认为是“澳大利亚式”的。我还阅读了关于政治危机和滞胀的内容。
在虚构作品中，热浪通常具有颠覆性，是社会变革时期的驱动力。F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》的高潮发生在一个闷热欲滴的日子里，充满了沸腾的阶级和种族紧张局势。在L·P·哈特利的《中间人》中，1900 年的热浪使等级制度松动；而在伊恩·麦克尤恩的《赎罪》中，故事开篇于 1935 年的一场热浪。“我爱英国的热浪，”上流社会的里昂·塔利斯慢条斯理地说，“这是一个不同的国家，所有的规则都改变了。”在楼上，他的母亲艾米莉正被偏头痛折磨得精疲力竭，心中想着那些“令人窒息”的农场和小镇。
1976 年，一个“热穹顶”给英伦三岛带来了 35C 的高温 (PA)
在酷热中，既有转变，也有瘫痪。
在欧洲各地，西班牙、意大利和法国正处于 40C 以上的高温烘烤之中，更有预测称温度将突破 47C。西欧各地爆发山火，数千人被撤离。在我打字时，英国正处于今年的第三次热浪中。我的头皮渗出汗水，后颈也是，更多热浪的阴影正若隐若现。
我在五月和七月最炎热的一些日子里，住在一条长长的土路尽头的乡村小屋中。那里脱离了电网，周围环绕着羊群，伴随着雨燕尖促的叫声，窗外西番莲花上的蜜蜂声以及附近的一条小溪。这样纯净的风景将我带回童年。因为夏天和童年都具有一种梦幻般的特质，一种发热般的躁动。这是一种可以通过虚构作品来塑造的非真实感。
漫长炎热的夏天对时间有一种 放慢和扩张的效果。学校假期 延伸至难以想象的长度， 常规被暂停，重心发生转移， 观察变得敏锐。在我的小说中， 我试图重新捕捉下午光线的 柔和感，以及在小巷中行走、 拍打牛芹和蕨类植物的时光。 那种拿着渔网静止不动，脚踝 没入溪流的感觉。躺在带刺的 干草垛上，想象在灼热的喉咙 中，一支融化的冰棒会是什么感觉。
夏天唤醒了感官。这里有气味——草地的、迷迭香的、发烫的石头和长满苔藓的河水的，以及事物腐败的气息。草甸河岸边层叠交织的叶片质感，以及所有在加速绽放中的一切所呈现的感官慵懒——在虚构作品中，这一切都具有关于青春期、性与死亡的强烈象征意义。
在酷热中，以及虚构作品的热浪中，衣物被解开或抛弃，角色在身体上以及在行为上都展露了真实的自我。
作者 16 个月大时，在德文郡享受阳光明媚的一天 (Charlotte Edwardes)
在小说中，酷热与热浪促使人们解开并脱掉衣服，角色们在身体上以及行为上都展现出真实的一面。肌肤暴露，思想袒露，人性被揭开。在《赎罪》(Atonement) 中，塞西莉亚·塔利斯脱掉衬衫和裙子，在充满挑衅且具有破坏性的情欲冲动时刻，跳入家政清洁工之子面前的喷泉中。高温具有一种增强作用。黛西·布坎南脱口而出，说盖茨比是他们中唯一一个在闷热中显得冷静的人，在丈夫汤姆面前无意中揭露了自己的真实感情。
在我的小说中，随着温度攀升，弗兰克及其兄弟姐妹被困房屋内的紧张感和威胁感也随之增加。他们的母亲在崩溃；他们的父亲远在海上。在同一个屋檐下，他们的姑姑和野蛮的表亲们正向被遗弃感屈服。这里有危险、暴力和性。
热力强迫真相地揭露。它为不合法的性冒险创造了条件。或者确实是性的觉醒。亦或两者兼有。在《中间人》(The Go-Between) 中，利奥·科尔森在故事发生时 13 岁，正处于青春期的门槛上。愤怒且受激素驱动的布里奥妮·塔利斯也是如此，正是她的脱口而出导致了伊恩·麦克尤恩《赎罪》中可怕的局面。同样在《水泥花园》(The Cement Garden) 中，作者将热浪与青春期成熟的乱伦幻想相结合，对照死亡与腐烂的近在咫尺，将小说推向一个歌剧般的结局。
保持冷静：2007 年改编的《赎罪》（环球影业）
热量烹煮，它融化，它触发不理性的转折。人的行为与物体一样，会弯曲、变形和扭曲。
夜晚，躺在开窗的床上，我可以感受到室外沉重的静谧涌入。童年的夜晚如天鹅绒般深不见底，黑暗吞噬一切，就像成年人暴怒的边缘一样具有威胁性。
当然，夏天也有残酷的一面。那是干旱的季节，森林起火，野生动物被焚烧。气候变化赋予了夏天一种新的忧郁色调，正如它赋予热浪小说那样。今天，大黄蜂种群因极端高温而濒危。明天会怎样？热浪不再仅仅是需要忍受的东西，而是一种恶性的生存威胁。
夏洛特·爱德华兹的《Trouble Was》由 Bloomsbury 出版
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杂志/专题
在安迪·伯纳姆着手削减增值税之际，利迪亚·斯宾塞-埃利奥特是那些已经通过穿着儿童装，从而避开 20 per cent 服装税的购物者之一
完美契合：利迪亚穿着一件专为前青春期女孩设计的格子裙与朋友们小酌（照片：利迪亚·斯宾塞-埃利奥特）
我第一次穿着 Primark 的女孩格纹裙子去酒吧时，坦白说，我很害怕。人们能看出我穿的是一件给 11 岁孩子设计的衣服吗？它是不是散发出一种学校夏季野餐的气息？我的屁股露出来了吗？但当我到达那里时，结果却更加令人捧腹且出人意料——我的一个朋友竟然也穿着一件来自童装区、一模一样的裙子。
在 TikTok 上，由于网红们分享他们的最佳购物心得，从 Primark、M&S、H&M 和 Zara 等高街品牌购买童装在过去一年中大受欢迎，某些单品（比如我那件 £10 的格纹裙子）成了人们向往的爆款。但许多深谙此道的购物者早年就发现了这种做法的吸引力：没有 20 per cent 的增值税 (VAT) 成本，这意味着任何脚小或身高在 5 英尺 5 英寸以下的人，都能以明显更低的价格享受最新的款式。
而且通常情况下，尤其是在基础款方面，这些省下的钱远不止 20 per cent 的增值税成本。我快步走到最近的 M&S，寻找一件短袖黑色 T 恤。我在女童区和女装区找到了几乎相同的产品，标价分别为 £4.50 和 £9 —— 价格翻了一倍。此外，童装 T 恤（13-14 岁）由 97 per cent 的棉和 3 per cent 的弹性纤维制成，而对应的成人款棉含量少 2 per cent，且含有 5 per cent 的合成纤维。
[[IMG_XXXX]] 莉迪亚和她的朋友凯瑟琳穿着同一件童装裙子出现在酒吧
27 岁的霍莉·加德纳 (Holly Gardner) 在 TikTok 上积累了 129,000 名粉丝，在 Instagram 上有 54,000 名粉丝，她经常分享自己在高街童装区购买的最佳单品。她身高 4 英尺 11 英寸，为了追求更好的合身度，从大约 17 岁起就开始放弃品牌的成人系列。“最初，我想是因为长度和价格，但随着年龄增长，我意识到衣服的比例更适合我，”她说，“尤其是臀部尺寸以及从裆部到肚脐的距离。”
“很多小码 (petite) 系列其实并没有真正照顾到娇小身材，”加德纳补充道，“他们基本上就是沿用平均尺寸的量度，只是把长度缩短，这并不怎么显身材，而且并不真正合身……对于此类内容变得如此受欢迎，我并不太惊讶。”
在高街品牌的选择中，加德纳总体上更喜欢 Zara 的童装区，因为其设计紧跟潮流；喜欢 New Look 的童装区，因为其版型合身；以及 H&M 的童装区，因为其牛仔裤款式更前卫，包括一种低中腰剪裁，这种款式在其他地方很难找到。
“我买过最成功的一件产品大概是 New Look 童装区的一条工装裤，”她热情地说道。加德纳此前已经放弃了这种风格，因为商店成人区的所有工装裤都“宽松到让人窒息”，尤其是裆部区域。“那样非常不修身，”她说，“但这些 New Look 工装裤完美合身——尤其是我的臀部，而且腰线不是太高，所以裆部感觉不会太低。”
[[IMG_XXXX]] 同样但不同：M&S 女装区的一件罗纹黑色 T 恤的价格是青少年女孩款的两倍
每当加德纳在社交媒体上分享她的发现时，总会有零星一些关于包容性的抱怨评论。“如果你又矮又丰满怎么办？”一名评论者问道。“我的臀部永远穿不下儿童尺寸，”另一人补充道。“我没有瘦到能这么穿的程度，”第三个人说。
显然，如果这不是她们平时的尺寸，我们不希望女性强行尝试穿进童装。但你并不需要是一个 0 码。在最近的一段视频中，身为英国 4-6 码的加德纳，与一位身高 5 英尺 4 英寸、英国 10-12 码且拥有 30G 罩杯胸围的朋友一起购物，以测试童装区能覆盖到哪些人群；结果两人都能穿进
另一种批评是，如果设计适合成年人，那么也许就不适合儿童。“我完全同意这一点，”加德纳说，并补充道这种情况是双向的：“有些单品会有一些小细节，表明它是面向年轻受众的，”她说。“他们会在 T 恤上加一个心形贴布之类的东西，而你在成人区不会看到这种设计。有些衣服确实感觉更有童趣。”
当然，这里的答案是品牌应当提供能够真实反映人口多样性的尺码：矮小的、高挑的、消瘦的、丰满的、巨乳的、平胸的、大腿丰满的、宽肩的、细腰的——以及介于两者之间的一切人群。但随着快时尚以光速发展，精细的裁剪需要付出代价，且在商业街上难以寻得。因此，购物者们开始采取自行解决的办法；通过在男装区、童装区和二手市场（Vinted 目前是英国第三大时尚零售商）购买，以寻找（价格实惠且）完美的合身之选。
在英国，各品牌独立决定其服装尺码的标准，这就是为什么你在一家店里可能是 8 码，而在另一家店里却是大码。例如，如果一个品牌旨在吸引青少年，他们更有可能选择他们认为能代表该群体的模特来展示衣服。因此，加德纳也经常在 Zara 旗下的面向年轻人的姐妹店 Bershka 购物，那里经常有相同的产品，但其尺寸更符合她的体型。不过，如果她的品味变得成熟，这个选项可能就不再适用。
目前，她和追随她的数十万人对童装部门的适应性心存感激。“作为一名成年人，很难找到合身的衣服，”加德纳总结道。“所以，我认为身材娇小的女孩们感到被关注了……我只是知道人们想听到这个消息。”
杂志
剑桥生理学家罗伯特·爱德华兹博士抱着世界上第一个试管婴儿路易丝·乔伊·布朗，后者于 1978 年的这一天通过剖腹产出生（盖蒂图片社）
306：君士坦丁一世被其军队宣布为罗马帝国皇帝。
1554：玛丽一世与西班牙的腓力二世结婚。
1587：基督教在日本被禁止。
1814：英国工程师乔治·史蒂芬森推出了他的第一台蒸汽机车，这是一台旨在在基林沃思矿道（Killingworth wagonway）上运煤的走行发动机，命名为“布吕歇尔”（Blücher）。
1848：初代亚瑟·詹姆斯·贝尔夫尔伯爵（1902-05 年期间担任首相）在苏格兰出生。他于 1916-19 年期间担任外交大臣，在此期间他发表了著名的《贝尔夫尔宣言》，向犹太复国主义者承诺在巴勒斯坦建立家园。
1894：美国演员沃尔特·布伦南出生。他在 100 多个电影中饰演性格角色，并且是唯一一位三次获得奥斯卡最佳男配角奖（《来拿吧》、《肯塔基》和《西方人》）的人。
1907：罗伯特·巴登-鲍威尔爵士旨在测试童军可行性的实验营在普尔附近的布朗西岛开始。四天后，童军组织成立。
1909：路易·布莱里奥成为首位飞越英吉利海峡的人，他驾驶一架三缸单翼飞机从加来附近飞往多佛城堡附近的诺斯法尔草地。
1933：由艾灵顿公爵领导的一支美国爵士管弦乐团在荷兰阿姆斯特丹举行了该国首次现场广播音乐会。
1943：贝尼托·墨索里尼被解职意大利总理，并根据维克多·伊曼纽尔三世国王的权力被逮捕。
1948：英国结束面包配给制度。
1959：气垫船（名为 SRN 1）首次完成英吉利海峡穿越——从多佛飞往加来——耗时略高于两小时。
1965：前英国冠军拳击手兼夜总会老板弗雷迪·米尔斯在索霍区的汽车内被发现枪击身亡。
1968：教宗保罗六世发表了通谕《Humanae Vitae》（论人类生命），拒绝接受人工避孕形式。
1978：首个试管婴儿在奥尔德姆总医院出生。这个女孩被命名为露易丝·乔伊·布朗。
1984：宇航员斯韦特拉娜·萨维茨卡娅成为首位在太空行走的女性。
1989：距离多佛仅 3.6 英里处，女飞行员格洛丽亚·普兰不得不将路易·布莱里奥的历史性飞机迫降在海峡中，当时
1999：兰斯·阿姆斯特朗赢得了连续七届环法自行车赛冠军中的首个，但后来因服用兴奋剂被取消资格。
2000：一架法国航空协和式客机在巴黎戴高乐机场起飞后不久撞入一家酒店，导致机上 109 名乘客和机组人员以及地面 4 人全部遇难。
PA
去年今日：美国总统唐纳德·特朗普抵达苏格兰进行为期四天的访问，期间视察了他在亚伯丁和艾尔郡的高尔夫球场。
生日
妮可·法希，时尚设计师，80 岁；希娜·麦克唐纳，广播员，72 岁；伊曼，模特及已故大卫·鲍伊之妻，71 岁；马特·勒布朗，演员，59 岁；凯文·菲利普斯，前足球运动员，53 岁；哈桑·派克，美国左翼政治评论员，35 岁。
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文化/周六访谈
在与詹妮弗·加纳共同出演《五星周末》(The Five Star Weekend) 之际，《惊声尖叫》系列主创瑞吉娜·霍尔与亚当·怀特探讨了关于幽默感、几乎成为超级巨星的经历、引导她进入演艺界的悲伤，以及她饰演的“一个接一个的战斗”中角色的悲剧命运。
霍尔在父亲突然去世后，为了支付新闻研究的学费而开始拍摄广告（盖蒂图片社）
在她的许多作品中，尤其是《惊声尖笑》（Scary Movie）系列电影里，雷吉娜·霍尔（Regina Hall）无疑是 21 世纪电影中最幽默的女性。在那些恐怖片恶搞电影中，她擅长诠释一种完美地融合了“聪明地扮演愚蠢”与“愚蠢地扮演聪明”的角色，像是一个以疯狂科学家之名行小丑之实的人。称她在银幕上“大嗓门”显得有些不尊重；称她“夸张”则更甚。应该将她的核心技能视为一种前卫的疯狂，这种疯狂建立在那些被模因（memes）、TikTok 和 YouTube 剪辑视频使其永垂不朽的台词演绎上（例如：“辛迪，电视在漏水”；“辛迪，这是一个骷髅！这是骨头！”）。我觉得霍尔非常有意思。她自己怎么看？
“嗯！”她在电话那头惊呼道，她目前在纽泽西州拍摄，正身处那里。“我知道我的朋友们很有趣。我的家人肯定也很有趣。”
我感觉到她像是在进行数学运算：有趣的人加上有趣的人等于……你可能也很有趣？“但幽默是主观的，对吧？”她反问道，“幽默是一件非常微妙的事情。”
那么，霍尔更像是一位理性的喜剧演员，她对待笑话的思考程度，与她在沉重的正剧中处理掉一滴眼泪的方式一样深思熟虑。她会解析每一句台词的细节及其背后的原因。也许这就是为什么她在各个领域都如此出色：在保罗·托马斯·安德森（Paul Thomas Anderson）去年的作品《接连战斗》（One Battle After Another）中，她为一名注定失败的自由斗士角色注入了母性但日益心碎的信念；同时，她将《惊声尖笑》和 2017 年的爆款电影《闺蜜之旅》（Girls Trip）中的轻快，与 2018 年的《支持女孩》（Support the Girls）等聪明且低调的独立电影中的演出相结合，并因此成为首位获得纽约影评人协会最佳女主角奖的黑人女性。
“我经历过心碎和失望，也经历过喜悦、平静和欢笑，”她说，“一直是我的生活在启发我的工作，而不是反过来。所以，就感觉我只是在这里生存于人类的经验之中，并试图将我的”
我们今天来聊聊《五星周末》（The Five Star Weekend），这是一部在 Sky 和 Now 播出的轻松的新限定剧，讲述了一群截然不同的女性通过与詹妮弗·加纳（Jennifer Garner）饰演的霍利斯（Hollis）的个人友谊而联系在一起的故事。在丈夫去世几个月后，霍利斯将这些女性聚集在一起，共度一个充满乐趣和情感宣泄的周末。克洛伊·塞维尼（Chloë Sevigny）饰演的塔图姆（Tatum）正在等待医疗结果；达西·卡登（D’Arcy Carden）饰演的布鲁克（Brooke）有一个不靠谱的丈夫；陈洁仪（Gemma Chan）饰演的神秘人物吉吉（Gigi）隐藏着一个毁灭性的秘密。而霍尔饰演的德鲁-安（Dru-Ann）是一名体育经纪人，正处于一场公关噩梦之中——在她的明星客户波西（Posey）宣布因心理健康问题休息后，她公开羞辱了对方，目前正在承担后果。
霍尔与达西·卡登、陈洁仪、克洛伊·塞维尼以及詹妮弗·加纳在《五星周末》（Peacock）中。
“我喜欢她在一个典型的男性主导的世界里如此直言不讳，”霍尔说，“而且她的快人快语让她陷入麻烦。扮演这样的角色总是很有趣。”
认为，“你拥有我当年没有的机会，我不希望你挥霍掉。”但她忘了，仅仅因为她年纪更大，并不意味着她更明事理。”
我告诉霍尔，德鲁-安（Dru-Ann）给我的感觉非常真实，因为我们通常被要求要坦率和自信，但又不能太过分，以免被评判。这就像是一场漫长的内心斗争。但霍尔似乎并不太认同。“也许吧，”她说，“每个人的内心指南针都不同，不是吗？对某些人来说这可能是一场战斗，而对其他人来说，这可能就是自然而然的。”
在剧集早期的某个时间点，德鲁-安用备忘录应用（NotesApp）写了一封道歉信，为她对待波西（Posey）的方式道歉，并将其截图发布在她的Instagram上。结果并不理想。我告诉霍尔，到目前为止，用备忘录应用道歉几乎成了名人的一种过场仪式。但我注意到，她一直以来完全没有陷入过丑闻。外界没有任何可疑的语录，也没有真正的公开约会史。作为一名电影明星，保持这种模糊且神秘的状态是故意的吗？
保罗·托马斯·安德森（Paul Thomas Anderson）和我总是讨论她发生了什么。我认为她死了。保罗认为她在监狱里……无论哪个走向都不太妙。
“我可以坦诚地说，我从未想过这个问题，”她说，“也许在职业生涯早期，我会更随意地表达我觉得必须表达的想法。但大概也没人想听那些话……”
不过，关于霍尔有趣的一点是，她最初学习的是新闻专业，这或许可以解释为什么她在面对像我这样的人时，能如此巧妙地保留信息。
“我确实学过‘非正式记录’（off-the-record）是什么意思，”她笑着说，“我的意思是，这可能起到了作用。”这意味着在采访中，在她开始说任何
她“不想让全世界知道”的话之前，她总是会先说“非正式记录！”。 “因为你不能在说完之后再说，那样就……太迟了！这都要感谢我在纽约大学（NYU）度过的时光。”
霍尔学习新闻专业的计划是为电视制作长篇新闻报道，结果在她的第一个学期，她的父亲突然死于中风。一位朋友建议她可以通过出演广告来赚外快，这让她找到了经纪人。“这从未在计划之中，但我们生活中许多重大的转折点都不是计划好的，”她说，“在所有这些悲痛之中，我完成了新闻课程，然后决定认真学习表演。所以就像是生活发生了，我开始了这一切并热爱它，而现在多年后，我在电话里和你交谈。”
[[IMG_XXXX]] 霍尔与香农·伊丽莎白（Shannon Elizabeth）和安娜·法里斯（Anna Faris）在原版《惊声尖笑》（Scary Movie）中（Shutterstock）
工作机会几乎是立刻到来的。她在《最佳伴郎》（The Best Man, 1999）和《恋爱与篮球》（Love & Basketball, 2000）等具有千禧年（Y2K）代表性的黑人电影中提供了宝贵的支持，随后在《惊声尖笑》（Scary Movie, 2000）中获得角色。她在该系列五部续集中的四部里再次饰演了自恋且可能心理不健康的布伦达·米克斯（Brenda Meeks）（尽管她在其中两部中被杀死了），最近一次出现在6月份的《惊声尖笑 6》（Scary Movie 6）中。
尽管取得了成功，但这些电影的制作过程却以混乱著称——马龙和肖恩·韦恩斯（Marlon and Shawn Wayans）与他们的父亲、电影制作人基南·艾弗里·韦恩斯（Keenan Ivory Wayans）共同创建了这个系列，但在 2001 年的《惊声尖笑 2》(Scary Movie 2) 之后，他们被制片人哈维·温斯坦（Harvey Weinstein）解雇，最终在第 6 部时才重新夺回了该系列的所有权。
“《惊声尖笑》是我演的第三部电影，所以当时有很多事情是我不懂的，”霍尔 (Hall) 现在说道。“那时我完全接触不到他们处理的幕后事务。我只是很高兴他们能够夺回属于他们的一切。”
我很好奇她是如何处理电影中一些比较辛辣的笑料的，尤其是当这些笑料涉及霍尔后来与之合作的名人时。《惊声尖杀》中她模仿了贾达·平克特-史密斯 (Jada Pinkett Smith) 在《尖叫 2》(Scream 2) 中那段略显夸张的公众谋杀戏，而之后她又在《女孩之旅》(Girls Trip) 中与平克特-史密斯合作。在《惊声尖笑 2》中有一个令人难忘的笑料：布伦达 (Brenda) 将一具落满灰尘的骷髅与当时以苗条著称的《艾莉·麦克比尔》(Ally McBeal) 主演卡莉斯塔·弗洛克哈特 (Calista Flockhart) 相比，而就在那时，霍尔本人加入了《艾莉·麦克比尔》最后一季的正式演员阵容。这是否曾让场面变得，嗯，尴尬？
“老实说，她们两位都非常出色，”她说。“卡莉斯塔很可爱。贾达是一个非常有格调的人。我希望大家都知道，这类笑话的意图绝非恶意。而且，那是布伦达在说话，你懂吗？布伦达这人本身就有问题。”她咯咯笑了起来。“就像，做那些评论的人不是我，而是这个看待世界方式非常独特的人。她有自己的视角，而这正是我热爱她的地方。”
她说，这些年来她逐渐向正剧转型并非刻意而为。“这其中有很大的运气，一些神圣的时机，以及上帝的眷顾，”她说。“我想，这大概是因为我每次都想尝试一些不同的东西。”《一场战斗》(One Battle) 这个角色是通过保罗·托马斯·安德森 (Paul Thomas Anderson) 直接找上门来的，他是她多年的邻居，有一天他问她是否愿意为他饰演迪安德拉 (Deandra)。
——霍尔将她描述为电影中的“欧比旺·肯诺比”式人物，是一个身处极左革命者团体中细心的观察者。我告诉霍尔，我认为迪安德拉是这部电影的核心，也是最大的悲剧。她可能是政权中最严肃、最忠诚的人，并为此付出了代价。我们最后一次见到她时，她正流着泪，被军队戴上手铐。
“保罗和我经常讨论她的结局，”她说。“我认为她死了。保罗认为她在监狱里。但我认为他们杀了她，因为她对他们来说不再重要了。她是最后一个挺到最后的人。”
[[IMG_XXXX]] 霍尔在保罗·托马斯·安德森的《一场战斗接一场战斗》(One Battle After Another) 中饰演一名注定失败的革命者 (Shutterstock)
我建议道，这太凄凉了。
“我的意思是，无论哪个结局都算不上美好，”霍尔笑了。她说她热爱迪安德拉。“她的灵魂中有一种平静，但同时拥有力量。这个角色演起来非常精彩。”
我告诉她，很有意思的是，从《好莱坞报道》(The Hollywood Reporter) 到《Vulture》，这么多媒体将《一场战斗接一场战斗》描述为她事业真正的突破口。这些年来她已经有过几次突破了。
《纽约时报》(New York Times) 此前在 2019. 年将《女孩之旅》和《支持女孩》(Support the Girls) 的接连成功描述为“类似于突破性的巨星光芒”。而在那之前的很多年，她就有《惊声尖笑》系列以及一大批热门作品。
“我只是认为，不同的观众在不同的时间发现了我，”她说。“有些职业生涯起步很快，而我则是缓慢而稳定地运行。老实说，我甚至不知道‘缓慢’这个词是否准确。更多的是‘稳定’。我的意思是，我绝对没有一夜成名。”
这是否曾困扰过她？
“没有！我认为这是一个非常美好的赞美。没有被某个特定的项目所定义，是我职业生涯中最大的快乐之一。”
我想，这正是她喜欢的方式。时而幽默，时而悲剧。永远在乐观地面对困境。
《五星周末》(The Five Star Weekend) 在 Sky Atlantic 和 Now 播出。
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文化/戏剧
已故剧作家莎拉·凯恩（Sarah Kane）那部令人震惊的剧作《净化》（Cleansed）常被视为现代英国剧场中最“硬核”的作品之一。导演丽贝卡·弗雷克纳尔（Rebecca Frecknall）和主演里奥·比尔（Leo Bill）就阿尔梅达剧院（Almeida）的新版复排，以及那些轰动故事背后的深意，与路易斯·奇尔顿（Louis Chilton）进行了对话。
“重点不在于暴力，而是在于你全程所处的那种极其紧张的状态，”比尔说道 (Nadav Kander)
英国剧作家莎拉·凯恩自杀已有近三十年，当时她年仅 28 岁——但导演们依然沉迷于她留下的五部令人震惊的剧作。在她生前，她是戏剧界一个备受推崇但极具争议的人物：她的处女作《炸裂》（Blasted, 1995）和第三部剧作《净化》（Cleansed, 1998）尤其具有煽动性，部分原因在于剧中的暴力以及对人类最深沉堕落之心的挖掘——即便在探讨这些的同时，也揭示了人性最根本的温柔。
现在是 2026, 和世界（在某种程度上）已经追上了凯恩的才华。最新一位尝试解读其作品的导演是丽贝卡·弗雷克纳尔，她正主导北伦敦阿尔梅达剧院对《净化》的全新排演。弗雷克纳尔是阿尔梅达剧院即将离任的副导演，《净化》是她在该剧院执导的一系列剧目中的最后一出，此前还包括《欲望号街车》（由保罗·麦斯卡主演）、《罗密欧与朱丽叶》以及《马尔菲公爵夫人》。“很有意思，”她在Zoom访谈中告诉我，“《净化》不像我执导过的许多其他剧作那样有丰富的演出历史，这在某种程度上带来了一种自由感。人们对这部剧有某种刻板印象，认为它是一出极其残酷且充满暴力的戏。它确实带有某种冷酷，这没错，但它本质上是一出关于爱的戏，旨在探索爱与连接的极限、可能性以及超越性的能力。”
她正与演员里奥·比尔（Leo Bill，曾出演《禁忌》；《白皇后》）坐在一起。比尔曾在 2019, 年出演弗雷克纳尔执导的《马尔菲》，此次他在剧中饰演廷克（Tinker）——一个在地狱般、法外之地的大学校园里扮演虐待狂傀儡师的角色。他的受害者包括一对用极端的暴力考验其爱情的同性伴侣，以及一名因失去哥哥而悲痛欲绝的女性，且她与哥哥之间存在乱伦关系。“这是一项艰巨的任务，不寻常的工作，”当我问及排练进展如何时，比尔评论道。他说，这部剧感觉上“以一种极致的方式呈现出‘硬核’感。这是一种我之前从未真正经历过的方式——而且是以一种非常英国式的方式。在方面
“硬核”无疑是一个相当恰当的形容词。该剧的触发警告显示出一种对禁忌挑战的“菜单上所有项目我都要”的态度——警告称《净化》包含“长时间的裸露、酷刑、肢体残缺、性暴力和乱伦、自杀以及药物滥用”——而我已经将这份名单缩减了一半。我想，这在某种程度上也是意料之中：毕竟这是一出出现了老鼠啃食肢体和切断舌头的戏。
利齐·康诺利（Lizzy Connolly）与比尔在《净化》中 (Marc Brenner)
这是《净化》在伦敦上演的第四次重大制作，也是十年来的首次。在 2016, 年由凯蒂·米切尔（Katie Mitchell）执导于国家剧院（National Theatre）的上一轮演出中，其带来的震撼效果成为了新闻头条：BBC 报道称，在预演期间有五名观众晕倒，数十人中途离场。弗雷克纳尔表示，如果这种情况在这里再次发生，她会感到“非常惊讶”。“这绝对不是我们的目标，”她说，“但我认为凯蒂在国家剧院演出时也不是这个目标。人们对各种类型的作品都会产生生理反应，只不过有些被报道得更多而已。”
当时，米切尔声称她的演员在演出期间经历了“奇怪”且“极端”的噩梦。“我以为我也[会一样]，”弗雷克纳尔承认道，“但实际上我晚上睡得更好。仅仅是因为太累了——不仅需要极高的注意力，还需要创意能量和体力要求。你是在尝试将那些无法搬上舞台的东西多次呈演。”
比尔将减轻素材阴郁氛围的功劳归于合作者之间强大的支持系统。“我们经常讨论不要把这些情绪带回家，”他说。“暴力本身并不是重点——重点是你全程所处的那种紧张状态。但在周末，我确实会感到一阵阵的悲伤袭来。所以你会试着做些愉快的事……比如我去了动物园。”
《净化》(Cleansed) 中的美感远比是否有人晕厥要重要得多
比尔引用了凯恩的一段话，那是她在 1995. 年接受《独立报》(The Independent) 采访时说的。当被问到在世界观如此阴森的情况下，她如何能够“每天早晨起床”时，她回答道：“一旦你意识到生活是非常残酷的，唯一的应对方式就是尽可能地以人性、幽默和自由地生活。”
“这话中有道理，”这位演员说。“我们确实生活在一个残酷的世界里。而且我有点质疑我们现在变得多么保守。我们应当接受挑战。而戏剧也应当挑战人们。剧院一直获得资助……我们不像是在小巷子里非法地从事某些令人发指的罪行并收取现金。”
里奥·比尔 (Leo Bill)
他说，有“相当多”的朋友和熟人告诉他，他们想来看这部剧，但对剧中的内容感到“害怕”。“就像在说，‘好吧，那我们都可以去看看诺艾尔·考沃德 (Noël Coward) 的剧’，”比尔说，“那样当然很好——但我们身处什么样的世界，竟然害怕被挑战？这一切都变成了关于，比如，‘噢，有些手被砍掉了’。而实际上，它是如此美丽。而且《净化》中的美感远比是否有人晕厥要重要得多。”
在搬演《净化》时还存在其他问题。凯恩的作品以探讨从剧本到舞台的转换而闻名，通常给导演留下了巨大的空间，让他们能以独特的方式诠释她的指令。（例如，她的最后两部剧作——1998 年的《渴望》(Crave) 和死后搬演的《4:48 精神病》(4:48 Psychosis) ——并未规定哪些对话由谁来说。）在《净化》中，这些挑战最明显地体现在舞台指示中，这些指示通常是直白的，但据称在舞台上是“不可能”实现的。比如向日葵从地板上生长出来，或者，嗯，前文提到的老鼠。弗雷克纳尔说，每一个场景都包含一个“需要解决的剧场问题”。
内容方面也存在挑战——对于观众或搬演者而言，缺乏常规的叙事信息。“身处一部提供如此少信息的戏剧之中，这是一种很不寻常的体验，”她说。“而且它……”
珀尔·钱达 (Pearl Chanda) 和比尔在《净化》中 (Marc Brenner)
并没有自然主义的线性结构。当你没有关于前后直接发生了什么的直观信息时，每个人在思考如何演绎这些场景时都会感到很有挑战性。”
“这不是那种，你知道的，从开头开始，两个人喝着咖啡聊天，然后一切慢慢地变得糟糕的剧本，”比尔说道。“它直接从一个极端开始并持续下去。没有任何喘息的机会——它是无情的。”
在《清洗》(Cleansed) 之后，弗雷克纳尔将前往老维克剧院（与阿尔梅达剧院的艺术总监鲁珀特·古尔德一起）担任副导演。她几乎不可能选出比这更大胆的告别之作了。这么多年后，凯恩的这部剧似乎仍然像它首演时那样具有挑衅性，同样不寻常——且同样具有挑战性。“你并不经常看到这类作品，”比尔承认道。“即使坐在排练室里阅读剧本，里面依然有一些我还不理解的地方。”
“但这不仅仅是理智层面的。你不需要完全理解它。《清洗》会在情感层面上触动你——如果你允许它这样做的话。”
展出至 29 August
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Roisin O'Connor
发生了什么？这位流行乐星在她的第七张长篇专辑（Tyrell Hampton）中听起来陷入了矛盾
Charli XCX 正处于困境之中。或者至少在她的第七张专辑《Music, Fashion, Film》中看起来是这样的。对于这位流行歌星最新的全长发行作品来说，其推广过程显得奇怪且脱节——如果算上她的《呼啸山庄》原声带，这已经是她两年多时间内的第三张专辑了——尤其是关于这个项目定位的信息传递含糊不清。其声音和主题同样令人困惑，且经常自相矛盾。
源自 2024 年那部定义时代的 sensation 之作《Brat》——这部作品引发了无穷无尽的迷因、周边商品、TikTok 舞蹈以及抽烟习惯。在那之后，她“没有灵感去写任何新东西”。随后，她的长期合作伙伴 AG Cook 建议他们在巴黎时装周期间进行录制；在这样一个封闭且忙碌的环境中工作的想法吸引了她。《Music, Fashion, Film》由此演变成一场对她最喜爱的三种媒介的庆祝，因此封面艺术采用了三位重量级人物：马丁·斯科塞斯 (Martin Scorsese)、马克·雅各布斯 (Marc Jacobs) 和约翰·凯尔 (John Cale) 的形象。“在某种程度上，这张专辑讲述了我能从事我现在所做的事情，让我感到多么幸运，”她在本月初告诉纽约市的粉丝们。
Charli 为这张唱片接受的第一次采访是《Vogue》的封面，采用了忧郁的黑白拍摄风格。标题为：“Charli XCX……讲述她的摇滚重塑。”随附的文章指出，“她确实在制作摇滚音乐”，Charli 则评论道：“对我来说，有趣的是去扭曲关于这方面的视角所能拥有的可能性。”因此，当她发布首支单曲《Rock Music》时，粉丝们感到困惑也在情理之中——这首歌完全不是一首摇滚歌曲，而是一首由跳跃的失真吉他扫弦和讽刺的副歌支撑的流行曲目：“我认为舞池已经死了/所以现在我们要制作摇滚 (rooooooock) 音乐。”
在围绕这首歌的激烈讨论中，Charli 发布了一段自己的视频，声明她“从未说过我在制作一张摇滚专辑”。所以，在完整聆听这张专辑时（全部 30 分钟；大多数歌曲时长在两分钟左右），事情变得更加令人费解，因为实际上，其中相当一部分内容确实看起来受到了摇滚的启发。《Card Declined》节奏强劲、阴暗且忧郁，呈现出西雅图垃圾摇滚 (grunge) 风格，Charli 以一种似乎在刻意嘲讽自己资本主义倾向的方式地吟诵着购物清单。《I’m Afraid》则更加凄凉，就像库尔特·科本 (Kurt Cobain) 的《Something in the Way》，像是歌曲形式的失眠症，她在其中挣扎于不同的身份以及“痛苦能带来更好的艺术”这一观念。整个专辑的制作水平极高——它将你包裹其中，充满
她身处时尚之中：Charli XCX 在她的《SS26》音乐视频中 (Henry Redcliffe)
由法国演员文森特·卡塞尔 (Vincent Cassel) 主演的《Camera》音乐视频，部分受到了一个镜头的启发：那是疲惫不堪的詹姆斯·迪恩 (James Dean) 在其最后一部电影《巨人》(Giant) 的片场补妆时的样子——他在拍完戏几周后就去世了。这个画面触动了 Charli，她思考起自己与艺术创作的关系：“尽管这可能让人感到艰难，有时甚至令人难堪，但仍有一种强烈的热情，驱使你到达那个让你感受到某种强大且无法言喻之物的地方，”Charli 在 Instagram 上发帖称。问题在于，当你看到完成的电影时，迪恩是在角色之中。而在《Music, Fashion, Film》中，有相当多让你觉得是在见证创作过程在实时进行的情况——你处于过程之中，而不是在欣赏最终打磨完成的版本。
在一次《滚石》(Rolling Stone) 采访中，Charli 谈到了她的信念，即严肃与幽默可以共存于同一空间。而事实上，很少有人能
这比她的其他作品更好——只要听听《Girl, So Confusing》以及《Brat》中的《Von Dutch》就知道了——但我在想，界限是否已经模糊到她无法掌控的程度。令人沮丧的是，像《Camera》这样优秀的歌曲，让我联想到 2003 年左右 Yeah Yeah Yeahs 乐队的《Fever to Tell》时期，探讨了她三十岁出头时对于追求电影事业的犹豫不决；而紧随其后的则是像《2007》这样的作品，是对她与 Troye Sivan 合作的怀旧狂欢曲《1999》的重复炒作。她娇嗔地低语道：“我可以带你回到像 2007 年那样的天堂。”在最后一首曲目《No One Lasts Forever》中，我们回到了严肃的话题，这首歌灵感来自大卫·克伦伯格（David Cronenberg）对一次濒死体验的描述，并包含了一段由导演本人录制的循环口述片段。
相当多的词曲创作感觉像是《Brat》留下的宿醉，经常围绕着这样的基调展开：“你这样做让我感觉那样，我是不是缺乏安全感，我讨厌这个，我想做点什么，这一切到底意味着什么？”这与自信的专辑名称及其高调的封面明星相矛盾。同样，《SS26》是唱片中最美的一首歌，但在一个混乱的世界中，它在徒劳的问题中地挣扎，以及在这个背景下时尚世界显得多么空洞；对于一张承诺要赞美这种形式的专辑来说，这是一个奇怪的信息。《Wink Wink》探讨了她著名的自我意识，但同样削弱了这一点：“你不懂我……我不知道为什么你不相信我。”
《Music, Fashion, Film》给人的感觉往往是 Charli 在试图弄清楚自己在这一切中的位置。她是试图让自己与这些名家对齐，还是在坦白她可能不属于那里的不安？她是在嘲讽她自己和同行的自我严肃，还是在向艺术的变革力量致敬？她可能希望你相信以上所有观点。但这张专辑传达的整体感觉，就像是在巴黎公寓窗边飘出的、掺了金酒的深夜哲学胡言乱语，伴随着灰色的烟圈。在那个时刻，你会觉得自己真的发现了什么。但在冷静的白日光线下，大多数想法都相当不成熟。
谜题
Chris Maume 带来他的每周常识测验
Q1. 以上这些人是谁，他们之间有什么联系？
Q2. 1978 年的今天，露易丝·布朗（Louise Brown）在奥尔德姆通过计划性剖腹产出生。她的出生有什么特别之处？
Q3. 哪支美国运动队的名称源于该球队的第一座球场靠近机场这一事实？
Q4. 1943 年的今天，皮埃特罗·巴多利奥（Pietro Badoglio）接替了谁？
Q5. 全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）是一组 5,000 种以上的合成化学物质，用于使物品具有不粘、防水和防油特性，也用于灭火泡沫。它们现在越来越多地被称作什么？
Q6. 在 1944 年 10 月的莱特湾海战中，美国护航航空母舰圣洛号（USS St. Lo）获得了什么样的不幸历史之最？
Q7. 最近有什么将 Stella Artois、Home Depot、Adidas、Lay’s、Walkers、Lenovo、McDonald’s、Ninja Kitchen、Pepsi、Verizon、Major League 和 Bank of America 这些品牌联系在一起？
Q8. 成立于 1969 年的 Debswana 钻石公司是谁与谁的合资企业？
Q9. 四舍五入到百位数，伦敦市长（Lord Mayors of London）至今共有多少位？
Q10. 本周去世的哪位广播员在他 2008 年关于政治正确性的著作《It’s a PC World》中，将王太后描述为“一个可怕的古板老妇”，从而引起了轩然大波？
Q1. 从左上起，海蒂·亚历山大（运输大臣）、米亚塔·法恩布勒（能源大臣）、安妮利斯·米德格利（首席监票官）、露西·鲍威尔（教育大臣）、艾莉·里夫斯（总检察长）和艾玛·雷诺兹（财政部首席秘书）均为本周安迪·伯纳姆任命的新内阁部长。
Q2. 她是最初的“试管婴儿”，即第一个通过体外受精（IVF）诞生的婴儿。她现在是一名IVF倡导者。
Q3. NFL（美国职业橄榄球大联盟）的纽约喷气机队。该机场是拉瓜迪亚机场，距离球队的原主场希亚体育场三英里；选择这个名字也是因为它与同样在希亚体育场比赛的棒球队纽约大都会队的名称押韵。
Q4. 他成为了意大利首相，接替了被维克多·伊曼纽尔三世国王说服辞职的贝尼托·墨索里尼。巴多格廖于1944年6月辞职，并于1956年去世。
Q5. “永久化学品”。它们的分解速度如此之慢，以至于可以在土壤、空气、水和动物中被发现，并给人类带来严重的健康风险。
Q6. 它是第一艘被神风特攻队击沉的船只：在被一架三菱A6M2零式战斗机击中后30分钟内沉没，导致889名船员中超过140人死亡。
Q7. 这些都是大卫·贝克汉姆在世界杯期间代言的品牌。《星期日泰晤士报》的一篇报道称，据信他在赛事期间赚了约$2500万美元。
Q8. 戴比尔斯公司和博茨瓦纳。该公司经营该国所有的四座矿山，占全球年度钻石产量的近四分之一。
Q9. 2025-26年度的现任市长苏珊·朗利女爵士是第697任伦敦市长，也是第三位担任此职的女性，且是第一位自称为“女市长”的人。第一任市长亨利·菲茨·艾尔温共服务了24个任期，从1189年到1212年。
Q10. 爱德华·斯图尔顿，前《今日》节目主持人。他在讲述与王太后的一次对话后发表了该言论，在对话中，王太后将欧盟领导人称为“所有那些匈奴人、意大利佬和西班牙佬”。
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eople have underestimated me all my life. If you tell me I cannot do something, I will fight like hell to get it done.” Angela Rayner, the reincarnated housing secretary, is thus defiantly sticking to the ambitious target set in the 2024 Labour manifesto to build 1.5 million new homes “over the next parliament”, due to end by 2029.
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It is fair to say progress on the building sites is running behind schedule, with only 400,000 or so net new homes built so far. If Ms Rayner really thrives on reverse psychology, as she claims, the country should unite in telling her she’ll never hit her target whenever she appears in public – or even when she’s entertaining friends. It might be exactly the motivation she needs.
If only getting the residential construction sector and all the various arms of the state to meet the challenge was simply a matter of willpower – that, and the indefatigable spirit of Ms Rayner – all might be well. But things have plainly been going wrong. As she herself admits, such a project is long term: “Houses don’t go up in five minutes. I wish they did – but it takes time.”
The obstacles to success are as plain as a lorry load of breeze blocks. Raw materials have been subject to the same inflation as other commodities; there are skills shortages across all the trades needed to meet the challenge; and consumer and business confidence has been hit by international volatility and hikes in taxation. Sluggish growth in real incomes has damaged affordability.
Mortgage rates, a key factor, have also been left higher than expected thanks to the war in Iran. All the while, Labour’s relaxation of planning rules and the hiring of more planning officers doesn’t seem yet to have galvanised local government sufficiently to clear backlogs and face down nimbyism.
Moreover, the Labour plan was, above all, a matter for the private sector to deliver once the government had created the right conditions, including some selective subsidies for social housing. In other words, it wasn’t just about “affordable” flats; the six- bedroom, double-garage-plus-utility-room mock-Tudor executive homes also counted towards the target, but were usually more profitable. Success was never directly in the hands of ministers, even theoretically.
Enter, through the front door of No 10, a new prime minister, one who has a taste for direct action and a faith in state control and provision of “life’s essentials”. He wants council housing – owned and controlled by local authorities, and rented out at fair (ie, below-market) rents.
This would be a minor revolution – but, as ever, there is as yet no detail to add to the broad aspiration he sometimes mentioned. The private sector would be invited and contracted to build these new homes, but, again, they might well run into labour shortages even before Mr Burnham runs out of money.
All the same, Labour’s housing target is worth keeping, precisely because it is a stretch. Indeed, it is a noble, if not essential,
mission. In that context, and by way of offering further backing to Ms Rayner, she is right to reject rent controls. Historically, these have led to slums. The issue is supply.
There is no single sector of the economy better placed to make a success of this government than housing. Building more homes would immediately boost growth, create jobs, raise vital tax revenues and reduce the cost of buying or renting a modern, energy-efficient home. That, in turn, would alleviate the extreme pressure on younger people, especially as they try to find a place of their own or simply make ends meet with a roof over their heads.
A property-owning democracy, and one with a healthy supply of social or council housing at affordable rents, would be a more stable and prosperous place. A secure home, no matter how modest, offers children a base from which to pursue their ambitions, as Sir Keir Starmer used to remind us.
Those Labour ministers, such as Ms Rayner, who grew up in poorer households, understand this just as well. Now, she has another concrete opportunity to prove her doubters wrong again.
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Trump tariffs than EU countries
Athena Stavrou Political reporter
The Supreme Court overturned Donald Trump’s previous import tax regime in February. The fresh tariffs came just hours before temporary 10 per cent levies, to which Britain was already subject, expired (AFP/Getty)
Britain has lost its advantage over the EU when it comes to trade, the head of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has said, after it emerged the UK will pay higher tariffs than the bloc following Donald Trump’s new wave of tariffs.
The US president is set to hit dozens of countries with renewed tariffs as time-limited levies, introduced in response to a Supreme Court defeat, expired yesterday.
However, while Britain and the EU will face the same 10 per cent tariffs, the bloc will pay less due to differences between the two
It has emerged that Britain must pay import taxes on top of the “Most Favoured Nation” tariffs imposed on all members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). However, the EU’s tariffs include the WTO levies.
The head of the BCC said the UK had lost its comparative advantage against the European Union as a result of the new tariffs. William Bain told the BBC: “There will be some concerns in the business community this morning about what the UK needs to do to get the same treatment the European Union has got here.”
While reflecting on the deal struck between former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump, the revelation underlines that the promise made by Brexiteers that the UK would have a competitive advantage outside the EU may not be true.
Joe Meighan, policy advisor for the European Movement UK, said: “The UK’s much-vaunted tariff advantage over the European Union has evaporated overnight. It is a timely reminder that chasing preferential treatment from individual trading partners, particularly the US, is no substitute for being part of the world’s largest integrated market.
“Any limited gains from going it alone are dwarfed by the economic advantages of frictionless access to the European single market. At a time when global trade is becoming more protectionist and economic coercion is on the rise, there is real strength in standing together. The EU negotiates from a position of collective economic power that Britain simply cannot match on its own, and today’s tariffs underline why our long-term prosperity lies in rebuilding the closest possible economic relationship with Europe.”
Labour MP Stella Creasy, chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, added: “If we are to protect British business then we need to recognise that even more damaging for Britain than the precise rate of Trump’s tariffs is the fact that we’re out of the room when the EU – which represents five times our GDP – decides its response. As the steel tariffs saga has shown, Brexit left us adrift in the middle of a global trade war. If we want growth and security, our reset must do everything possible to address that.”
Scottish first minister John Swinney said there will be a ‘significant benefit’ for Scottish producers as the 10 per cent tariff on whisky was lifted yesterday (AFP/Getty)
A US trade representative said the levies had been imposed on countries that have not done enough to enforce bans on items produced by forced labour.
“President Trump recognises that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labour from global supply chains,” ambassador Jamieson Greer said. “The United States has had a forced labour import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it. It’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.
“Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and a distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere. I am encouraged by the trading partners who have moved quickly to adopt forced labour import prohibitions, and look forward to ensuring their effective enforcement.”
Under the rules, the UK could be eligible for exemptions on products where doing so would encourage compliance in meeting this commitment.
Junior housing minister Sally Jameson insisted that the country is “in a better place today” due to certain tariffs on products such as whisky having been removed.
“Well, we’re actually in a better place today than we were yesterday because things like whisky and medical technologies, the tariffs won’t apply,” she told Sky News. “And actually, through the deal that was negotiated with the US, Britain has done better out of it. But of course, conversations will always continue between officials and ministers, both here in the UK and in the US, to make sure that we’re getting the best deal that we can.”
The US president announced in April that he would remove the whisky tariff, following the state visit by the King and Queen. Scotland’s first minister John Swinney said there will be a “significant benefit” for Scottish producers as the 10 per cent tariff was lifted yesterday.
The US administration said that the action followed investigations by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which included public hearings, more than 2,100 public comments, and engagement with trading partners “to remedy these longstanding concerns”.
However, the USTR also said there would be product exemptions, where tariffs would lead to a shortage of raw
materials domestically, cause economy-wide disruptions or where items cannot be grown or produced in sufficient quantity or at a reasonable price in the US.
There would also be an exemption for products from the UK and other named countries where “that would encourage these economies to fulfil commitments regarding forced labour import prohibitions or to enact and effectively enforce a forced labour import prohibition”.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer in Mexico on Thursday (Reuters)
Tariffs are paid by companies in the US that import foreign products and usually move to pass along the cost by charging consumers higher prices. Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living, so the administration is taking a risk in rolling out new tariffs ahead of the critical midterm elections in November.
The UK exports more to the US than to any other single country. In 2024, UK exports to the US were worth £66bn, 17 per cent of all UK goods exports.
The Economic Prosperity Deal agreed between the two countries last year aimed to mitigate the impact of US tariffs on UK industries and deepen commercial ties.
A government spokesperson said: “There is no change to the tariff rate facing UK businesses as a result of this announcement. The UK remains on a 10 per cent tariff rate and the preferential access secured under our agreement with the United States remains in place.
“We take forced labour very seriously and ensure that in global supply chains UK businesses are not complicit in forced labour and human rights violations. The US has recognised the steps the UK is taking, which is why there are no additional tariffs for the UK under this announcement.”
10 per cent tariffs:
Argentina
Bangladesh
Cambodia
Canada
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Indonesia
Malaysia
Mexico
Pakistan
United Kingdom
10/12.5 per cent tariffs:
Japan
Korea
Switzerland
12.5 per cent tariffs:
Algeria
Angola
Australia
Bahamas
Bahrain
Brazil
Chile
China
Colombia
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Egypt
Guyana
Honduras
Hong Kong
India
Iraq
Israel
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kuwait
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Peru
Philippines
Qatar
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Türkiye
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam
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Burnham as he opens No 10 North
PM hails ‘full circle’ moment after having to leave the North West at the start of his career
David Lynch
It was the first day of a new role for Manchester’s Heron House (PA Wire)
Andy Burnham has said he wants to “get Britain hoping again” as he opened a new headquarters for the centre of government in Manchester.
The prime minister is expected to work at No 10 North, at Heron House in Manchester, once each week during his premiership, as part of his move to push power out of Westminster.
He described opening the new base as the “best day of my life” as he spoke to staff and ministers there yesterday morning, and
Mr Burnham added: “And it’s true of places all over the country to get on in life, you had to leave where you were because things weren’t here. The country has always been a little like that, hasn’t it?
“That opportunity has not been evenly spread around the country, and not all places have felt that they are part of the national story, and that is what this government is going to work every single day to change.
“And that is what No 10 North is all about: putting power in every postcode so that people can turn things around for themselves and make changes, just as this great city has done, and the other English cities are doing through devolution, turning things round because of that ability to be able to do more for themselves.”
The prime minister insisted No 10 North was key to getting “good growth going in every part of the country”.
He added: “I mean it when I say every postcode, everybody. That’s what we’ve got to do. Nowhere forgotten, everywhere feeling heard, everyone with a sense that their place can be more than it is today.
“High streets lifted around the country, Britain reindustrialised, getting those good jobs back into all of our regions. We’ve got such an opportunity, everybody, ahead of us. I said I wanted to get Britain believing again. Today is a day where we hopefully can really build that sense. Get Britain hoping again.
“I think we can do that together if we carry on working in this way. So it is such an amazing moment for me. It’s everything I believe in. Everything I’ve spent my whole life working towards.”
Mr Burnham last night also ruled out a snap general election, saying it would “postpone that essential work” of implementing his own version of Labour’s 2024 manifesto.
During an interview with the Manchester Evening News, the former mayor insisted he would not call an early election. He said: “No I’m not. I don’t think that is right.
“We live in a parliamentary democracy. There was a manifesto in 2024. I’m sticking to that manifesto. I’m bringing forward my version but it is still within that manifesto. I just think that we need to focus on making the country work.
“That is the biggest priority right now. A general election would postpone that essential work. I’m also trying to do politics differently, as I did when I was mayor of Greater Manchester.”
Earlier Mr Burnham also spoke about wanting to create a “one- team feeling” across the whole of the UK, and insisted No 10 North was “as much for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as it is for the regions of England”.
‘Big things can be done from here,’ says Burnham
The new prime minister met face-to-face for the first time on Thursday with Scottish first minister John Swinney, and told him that another independence referendum is “off limits”.
He also met Wales’s first minister Rhun ap Iorwerth in Glasgow, who pushed for the Welsh government to be given the same devolved powers as those available to Scotland, including over rail, policing, justice and the Crown Estate.
Concluding his speech at No 10 North, Mr Burnham railed against critics – “often London-based” – who he claimed will see the project as a “gimmick”.
The prime minister added: “What does it cost for everybody to troop down to London every time there’s a meeting when you need to make an argument about something?
“What does that cost? So actually, isn’t it better that we have a north pole that balances the south pole of our country, where power will always be concentrated?
Among those who joined Mr Burnham at No 10 North, a building which is also home to GCHQ’s Manchester and North West hub, were senior ministers chancellor John Healey, first secretary of state Louise Haigh, and the country’s top civil servant, cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo.
PA
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the 1.5m new homes it promised
Minister denies dropping election vow but says ‘homes don’t go up in five minutes’
Athena Stavrou
Angela Rayner compared Labour’s chances of hitting its housing target to her chances of running the London Marathon (PA Wire)
Angela Rayner has indicated she does not expect Labour to meet its major manifesto pledge to build 1.5 million homes before the next election.
Andy Burnham’s newly appointed housing minister denied she was abandoning the commitment, but compared achieving it to her chances of “running the London Marathon”.
The promise to construct 1.5 million homes over the five-year parliamentary term was a key part of Labour’s 2024 election
But asked if the target was still realistic, Ms Rayner told BBC Breakfast yesterday: “I’m not dropping it – I’m just saying it’s a really difficult challenge.
“I am going to keep the target, but it’s like me saying I’m going to run the London Marathon in under five hours. That would be a real challenge for me, but I would do it.”
She added: “This isn’t an excuse, but houses don’t go up in five minutes. I wish they did – it takes time.”
England saw 208,600 new homes built in 2024/25, a 6 per cent fall from the previous year (PA)
Ms Rayner was reappointed housing minister – a job she had resigned from in 2025 after a row over whether she dodged stamp duty – when Andy Burnham became prime minister on Monday.
Ms Rayner said the housebuilding commitment was “very challenging” when it was made two years ago – and was even “more challenging” now as a result of increased construction costs and other factors which had had “a real negative impact”.
However, Ms Rayner was defiant after it was pointed out to her that in its first two years the government had built fewer than 300,000 homes – well short of the number needed to meet the 1.5 million target over five years.
She said: “I’m a straight-talking person, 1.5 million homes is a difficult target… but I’m going to keep it, I’m not going to be defeated.
”People have underestimated me all my life. If you tell me I cannot do something I will fight like hell to get it done.”
England saw 208,600 new homes built in 2024/25, a 6 per cent fall from the previous year and the lowest annual total since 2015/16, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Labour.
Andy Burnham reappointed Rayner to the job from which she had resigned in 2025 (Reuters)
Since Labour entered government in July 2024, around 392,400 net additional homes have been delivered, leaving ministers running at roughly two-thirds of the rate required to hit their goal by 2029.
The housebuilding industry has warned that without stronger consumer confidence, lower mortgage costs and healthier balance sheets across the construction sector, delivering the scale of housebuilding needed to meet Labour’s targets will remain an uphill battle.
Torrin Wilkins, director of Centre Think Tank, said the government should abolish stamp duty and impose binding housebuilding targets on councils to boost growth in the sector.
“The 1.5 million target comes up again and again. It’s almost turning into the tens of thousands immigration target in the Cameron era in that we never seem to be able to meet it and yet it’s constantly brought up,” he said, adding it was “unlikely” the government will meet its target if it does not change direction.
Mr Wilkins said the government should replace stamp duty with a proportional property tax to “unlock” housing sales and give developers incentive to build.
“Developers will look at who can afford homes in this local area and stamp duty is a real block,” he said.
“If Andy Burnham’s aim is breathing space, then abolishing stamp duty is probably the number one on that list because it allows people to upsize and downsize more easily and create that extra space.”
He also recommended councils and local authorities are handed binding targets with consequences for not meeting them.
“I think it would be a good step forward as well, just to really push that this isn’t an optional housing target. This is a national situation and a national emergency that needs to be taken seriously.”
Senior research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, Hannah Aldridge, said both soaring construction costs and a
“A few things that have happened in the last few years is essentially construction costs have gone up,” she said.
“Then at the same time, we’ve also seen interest rates being slightly higher than what we were used to in the 2010s. So actually the amount that people are able to borrow to buy a house, it’s becoming harder for people to get the mortgages to buy a house that costs that much.”
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ADHD drugs rises 40% in a year
Rebecca Whittaker
About 2.5 million people in England have ADHD, according to the NHS, but many people remain undiagnosed (PA)
The number of middle-aged women being prescribed ADHD drugs has soared by 40 per cent over the past year, data shows.
Some 427,000 people in total were prescribed drugs to treat ADHD last year in England, increasing by 31 per cent, according to the latest data published by the NHS.
But as more people receive an ADHD diagnosis later in life, some of the sharpest increases in prescription numbers can be seen in adults.
Some 267,000 patients aged 18 and over were prescribed ADHD medication, an increase of 40 per cent in comparison to 190,000 in 2024.
And the women aged 55 to 59 group also increased by about 40 per cent, with 4,107 patients prescribed ADHD drugs last year. There were similar figures among women aged 50 to 54.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Stefan Ivantu told The Independent: “The rise in middle-aged women seeking assessments reflects a long-overdue recognition of female ADHD presentation and a welcome reduction in stigma.”
While 59,111 boys aged 10 to 14 years were given a prescription in 2025, making them the largest group, huge increases can be seen in women and girls across all ages.
Some 18,912 girls aged 15 to 19 years were prescribed medication in 2024, but last year that figure jumped by more than 5,000 patients.
About 2.5 million people in England have ADHD, according to the NHS, but many are undiagnosed. Symptoms can present differently between men and women.
While boys often show “hyperactive” symptoms, women frequently present with inattentiveness, anxiety and disorganisation. Research has suggested that such gender- related socialisation has since led to a generation being overlooked in childhood, only to seek diagnoses later as adults.
“A sharp surge in prescriptions makes clinical quality more vital than ever,” Dr Ivantu added.
Huge increases in the number of women and girls being prescribed ADHD medication were seen across all ages (Getty/iStock)
“We must carefully rule out physical and metabolic factors, such as thyroid issues or perimenopause, which often mimic cognitive fatigue, while identifying co-existing conditions like burnout or anxiety.
“While medication can be transformative, it is rarely a standalone fix. In a world of constant technological distraction and modern life pressures, long-term wellbeing demands pairing precise medical care with lifestyle changes, tech boundaries, and healthy routines.”
But this increase in awareness comes as more than 800,000 people are awaiting a referral for an ADHD assessment, according to NHS data.
Henry Shelford, chief executive of the charity ADHD UK, told The Independent: “We have a huge healthcare gap for ADHD treatment, and reducing that in a meaningful way is important.
“ADHD was only formally recognised by the NHS via Nice for children in the year 2000 and for adults in the year 2008. So for
people wondering why there are a whole load of middle-aged people, including me, coming forward for a diagnosis and treatment, it is because we didn't have a chance of being picked up as kids. We're now having a conversation about ADHD; people are recognising it in themselves and coming forward for help.”
Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist and co-founder of the Chelsea Psychology Clinic, explained many women have watched their children receive a diagnosis and recognised themselves in the description.
“What we see at the clinic is a rising number of women in their forties and fifties arriving because something they have been struggling with for years finally has a name,” she said.
“Many have been compensating for decades, holding their lives together through considerable effort and intelligence. We call this masking – the conscious and unconscious effort to appear on top of things when the internal experience is quite different. It takes an enormous amount of energy to sustain, and it rarely comes without anxiety.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “We know we need to do more to improve care for people with ADHD, which is why the NHS commissioned an ADHD taskforce to look at a range of issues including trends in diagnosis and the right balance between therapeutic approaches and medication.
“In line with recommendations from the taskforce, we are starting to redesign local services, transform support and bring down waiting times.”
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growing vegetables’
Farmers warn industry ‘can’t carry on like this’ as back-to-back heatwaves bake countryside
Suha Kidwai
Ben Andrews runs Broadward Hall Farm in Herefordshire (Supplied)
Farmers have warned the industry “can't carry on like this” as they struggle following back-to-back heatwaves and prolonged periods of dry weather.
An official drought has been declared in parts of Wales, while regions across the east and south of England continue to suffer exceptionally low or no rainfall, leaving agricultural workers under severe pressure.
Ben Andrews, who runs Broadward Hall Farm in Herefordshire, told The Independent: “Our veg is seriously struggling this year. At this point, we’re really having to sit down and consider whether we’re even going to plant vegetables next year.
“For many farmers, this is the worst harvest yet, and for the second year in a row. We can’t carry on like this.”
Mr Andrews is a fourth-generation farmer who keeps up to 600 acres of land with permanent grazing cattle, and grows vegetables including potatoes, broccoli, kale and lettuce for a national veg box scheme.
“I'd say a lot of farmers have taken big hits because of this weather,” he warned.
The National Drought Group earlier this week identified eight areas as being in "prolonged dry weather", which is the final stage before an official drought is declared.
Simon Wright, who runs Lamb Farm in Romney Marsh, on the Kent-East Sussex border, told The Independent: “I farm livestock and it’s probably one of the driest times we’ve ever had, I think.
“All of our fields are divided by ditches which obviously keep our sheep and cows in the right place, but all the ditches are now dry so basically the sheep and cows just wander where they like. Water is a problem too. Luckily we have got mains water, but it’s obviously going to cost us a fortune."
Simon Wright keeps thousands of animals at Lamb Farm in Romney Marsh (Supplied)
The farmer, who keeps several thousand sheep and cattle across 1,200 acres of property, added: "We’ve run out of food. We’re starting to use our winter food. We’ve just started feeding the sheep hay now, and then hopefully the weather’s going to break. It’s very expensive. Normally they rely on eating grass at this time of year.
“There’ll be no profit in the job if it carries on like this for much longer – we’ll be digging into the reserves.”
National Farmers’ Union deputy president, Paul Tompkins, said growers are working "around the clock" to water crops and care for livestock, coming off the back of consecutive years of volatile weather.
"For many arable farmers, this could be another difficult and expensive harvest after extreme weather impacts in both 2024 and 2025, which saw both drought and flood,” he said.
Mr Tompkins urged the government to strengthen long-term resilience against climate change by overhauling licensing and easing planning rules to make building on-farm water reservoirs easier.
Mr Wright said the animals at his farm are already having to be given their winter food because there isn’t enough grass for them to eat (Supplied)
Mr Andrews added: “It’s only getting hotter. The weather is getting more extreme – six months ago, our crops were basically underwater.
“Farms in the North, who haven’t been too badly affected yet, will be. This is a warning not to wait; farmers need to be prepared.
“We need to have better weather-proofing so we can be more resilient, because nobody is escaping this.”
Retailers say they are also monitoring the situation closely as reduced crop yields threaten to push up grocery prices.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), said: "Extreme weather, including drought, can affect crop yields and place upward pressure on prices.”
He added retailers are looking into alternative suppliers where appropriate to minimise the impact on shoppers.
Large parts of England are on the verge of drought, according to the National Drought Group (PA)
Forecasters offer little prospect of immediate relief. Will Lang, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, warned rainfall over the coming weeks is "unlikely to be widespread or substantial", particularly in the driest southern regions.
Helen Wakeham, chair of the National Drought Group and director of water at the Environment Agency, said hot conditions were rapidly depleting resources while pushing demand higher.
"This is a difficult combination, and we are seeing the effects on our farmers, our wildlife, and the amount available for public and business use," she said, urging the public to conserve water where possible.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government recognises the toll extreme weather takes on the sector.
"We are helping the sector build greater resilience to climate shocks through our farming schemes and through our work with the National Drought Group," they added.
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with ‘bomb’ seized near Irish border
David Young
Isobella Perrie Sullivan leaves Trim District Court in Co Meath yesterday (PA)
A law student has been charged after police intercepted a car bomb near the Irish border. Isobella Perrie Sullivan, 25, of Clane in Co Kildare, appeared before a special sitting of Trim District Court in Co Meath yesterday evening.
Gardaí investigating the incident, which involved a suspected dissident republican bomb, arrested Ms Perrie Sullivan, who was the driver of the car.
In an intelligence-led swoop, members of the Garda’s Special Detective Unit stopped the vehicle travelling on the N2 south of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan on Wednesday afternoon.
The Garda described the bomb seized from the vehicle as “extremely significant”. It is understood the device found contained suspected military-grade explosives.
Garda sources have described the bomb as “highly sophisticated” and “advanced”. Another suspect, a man aged in his 40s, remains in custody at a Garda station in the Dublin area.
A court hearing heard that during a search of her vehicle, a bag was discovered in the rear seat that contained Semtex and a detonator, the court heard, prompting the area to be evacuated and Ms Perrie Sullivan was arrested.
The court heard that Ms Perrie Sullivan was studying for a law degree and wanted to become a barrister. Gardaí objected to bail due to the seriousness of the offence.
Ireland’s minister for justice Jim O’Callaghan described the seizure as ‘very worrying’ (PA)
Defence solicitor Gavin Booth, of Phoenix Law, said his client had been asked to take a bag to the north, and had not been aware what was in it, adding she had been “manipulated”.
It came with a number of conditions, which included an independent €15,000 surety, that she surrenders her passport, stays at an address approved by Gardaí, has a mobile phone number on which to be available 24/7, to sign in every day at Naas Garda Station and a curfew of 9pm to 7am.
Garda commissioner Justin Kelly confirmed details of the operation as he spoke to media at a Garda graduation event in Co Tipperary yesterday morning.
“To be clear, what we found was an extremely significant seizure,” he said. “So this was an explosive device.”
Commissioner Kelly added: “Any seizure of this nature is really concerning.
“However, we certainly know that there are a small minority of dissident republicans who did not agree with the Good Friday Agreement. They did not put weapons and explosives (out of use), they didn’t, you know, go through with the proper process in relation to decommissioning.
“So that is something that we continue to deal with.
“There’s a small minority of these individuals – I would describe them as radicalised republicans – and this is a threat that we’re going to continue to face for some time in An Garda Síochána.”
Ireland’s minister for justice Jim O’Callaghan described the seizure as “very worrying”.
“I think it evidences the fact that there is an ongoing threat in respect of dissident republican activity,” he said.
“But I also know that there’s been great cooperation between the PSNI and An Garda Síochána and, I think, I suppose the developments recently and the work of An Garda Síochána indicate the benefits of having that close co-operation between the PSNI and An Garda Síochána.”
PSNI assistant chief constable Davy Beck said police on both sides of the Irish border shared a “joint commitment” to tackle the dissident republican terror threat.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson described the development as ‘chilling’ (PA)
DUP leader Gavin Robinson described the development as “chilling”. The east Belfast MP questioned whether the Irish government needed to increase its focus on tackling dissident republicanism.
“I very much welcome this significant seizure and the arrests made by our colleagues in An Garda Síochána, with whom we work very closely on a daily basis,” he said.
Northern Ireland secretary Sir Chris Bryant commended the Garda for thwarting a potential attack.
“Intercepting a dangerous device like this undoubtedly saved lives and kept communities safe on both sides of the border,” he said. “Strong cross-border security co-operation remains as vital as ever.”
“All those involved in stopping this deserve enormous credit,” he said. “Their actions may have prevented innocent families from suffering unimaginable tragedy.”
Sinn Féin Stormont assembly member Gerry Kelly described those responsible for the explosive device as “reckless”.
“Those responsible represent no one, are void of support and have nothing positive to offer our communities. Their actions are entirely reckless,” he said.
“Those involved should abandon their futile actions, leave the stage once and for all, and allow our communities to continue moving forward together in peace.”
PA
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Don’t mention the tariffs
Children play stick hockey at an event for the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, connecting Ontario, Canada, with Michigan, US. It is named after the legendary Canadian ice hockey player who played the majority of his career for the Detroit Red Wings. Reuters
Flight of the Phoenix
Eva Gray of Birmingham Phoenix misses a catch as Sophia Dunkley of Trent Rockets makes her ground during The Hundred match at Edgbaston. Reuters
On the lash
Who’s behind me?
Formula One championship leader Kimi Antonelli at the pit wall ahead of practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Reuters
Discus thrower Vitaliy Chernov in action at the Russian Athletics Championships in Yekaterinburg. Reuters
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Splish, splash, splosh: a child makes the most of a cool fountain in Worcester near the River Severn (David Davies/PA Wire)
Health alerts issued as hot weather on the way
Yellow heat health alerts have come into force across parts of the UK despite forecasts of rain this weekend. The warnings are in place until 9am tomorrow, and cover the East Midlands, West Midlands, South East, South West, the east of England and London.
The UK Health Security Agency said the hot weather could have an impact across health and social care services and put vulnerable people at risk. Health chiefs also warned water‑related incidents may increase, including risks from cold water shock and drowning.
Temperatures are set to hit 29C today in London and 28C in Birmingham and Norwich, but rain is also forecast. It comes after three consecutive heatwaves and one of the driest springs on record with hosepipe bans in place across the country.
Met Office chief forecaster Steve Willington said: “The high pressure has been a key feature of the UK’s weather forecast over the last few weeks, bringing above-average temperatures and extremely dry conditions for many."
Four men killed as car hits lamp post in Merseyside
Four men in their twenties have died after a car crashed into a lamp post in Merseyside in the early hours of yesterday. Merseyside Police were called to reports that a black Seat Cupra had come off the road after crashing in Huyton just before 2am while travelling from Liverpool towards Knowsley.
Two 23-year-old men, a man aged 24 and a man aged 26, were pronounced dead at the scene. A 27-year-old man, who was a passenger inside the car, was taken to hospital where he remains in a stable condition.
Superintendent Paul Holden said: “This is a truly devastating moment for their families and loved ones, and it is now our priority to get answers for them on how the collision occurred.”
R&B singer Chris Brown pleads guilty to affray
R&B singer Chris Brown has pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to affray after a confrontation at a Mayfair club in 2023. He had been facing trial later this year after he hit a former friend twice over the head with a bottle on the dance floor at the Tape private members’ club in Mayfair.
Yesterday at Southwark Crown Court, a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm against Abraham Diaw was dropped along with two charges of possessing an offensive
Prosecutors said that Brown struck his victim twice over the head with a glass bottle before his vocal coach, Omololu Akinlolu, 40, joined and punched the man to the head. The victim was also kicked while he was sitting defenceless on the floor, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) added. He attended St Mary’s Hospital with head and knee injuries.
Brown was charged along with his vocal coach Akinlolu, who had also denied assault occasioning actual bodily harm and has now pleaded guilty to affray. The pair will be sentenced on 26 October for the affray charge.
Saudi prince died from alcohol and party drug mix
A member of the Saudi royal family who was found dead in his hotel room was almost three times the drink-drive limit and had mixed alcohol with the drug GHB, a court was told yesterday. Abdullah bin Fahad bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Jalawi al Saud was found dead in his bathroom at the Marriott Hotel in Kensington, west London, on 25 November last year.
An inquest at Inner West London Coroner’s Court heard that the 29-year-old had checked in on 19 November for a one-week stay. A cleaner found him fully clothed, lying on the bathroom floor. A toxicology report heard that the young royal had a blood ethanol concentration of 222mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood and in a range where it could possibly cause coma.
Assistant coroner Jean Harkin said that she did not believe he had intended to take his life. She recorded a verdict of death by misadventure with the cause of death as multi-drug ingestion.
‘Mega dinghy’ carried record number of migrants
A new record was set on Thursday as 165 migrants successfully crossed the Channel to the UK aboard a single vessel. This figure surpasses the previous high of 128 people who made the perilous journey from France in a single boat earlier this month.
Border Security Command towed the vessel into Dover. The boat was estimated to measure approximately 13 metres (42ft) in length, comparable to a standard bus.
Refugee charity Care4Calais warned that the Channel crossing route is becoming “more and more dangerous” due to the escalating number of people packed onto each vessel.
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people to flee in France and Spain
Cap Ferret blaze burns through 48 square miles in just two days
Stephane Mahe
Beachgoers at Moutchic in Lacanau, southwestern France yesterday as smoke rises from wildfires (AFP/Getty)
Massive forest fires raging across southwestern France and central Spain have forced more than 200,000 people from their homes. A blaze near Cap Ferret, located just 60km (37 miles) from Bordeaux on France's Atlantic coast, has consumed some 48 square miles since Wednesday and has placed the area, known for its stunning landscapes and upmarket resorts, under severe threat.
In Spain, the government declared a national emergency for wildfires for the first time as blazes in Madrid and the nearby province of Ávila prompted the evacuation from towns west of the capital.
Dozens of firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either France or Spain. Authorities also believe the cause of both fires was accidental.
Some 141,000 fled homes in the Gironde and Landes departments in France, the Interior Ministry said. In central Spain, 60,000 were forced from their homes, the Spanish Interior Ministry said.
"It's quite impressive and even frightening," said Laurent Moretti, a resident in the town of Arès, France. "An evacuation on this scale has never happened before. All we really hope is that the firefighters can quickly get it under control."
Local authorities in the Gironde department said 53 homes and a campsite have been ravaged by flames, adding that 42 firefighters were injured. Around 1,500 people who fled the peninsula arrived by sea in the city of Arcachon, some aboard small water taxis and others on larger boats.
Hundreds of French firefighters have been deployed and additional ground and aerial reinforcements were sent yesterday to tackle the blaze. Meanwhile, another major wildfire burned further south down the coast and was not contained as strong winds did not help firefighters.
French president Emmanuel Macron said France will receive EU reinforcements including two Croatian Canadair firefighting aircraft, two Portuguese Air Tractor aircraft, and two heavy-lift Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The national emergency in Spain means that the nation’s interior ministry, which controls police and security forces, has taken
charge of overseeing the firefighting efforts that are being fanned by a heatwave, with temperatures expected to top 39C in parts of the country.
The two major fires near Madrid merged into one single blaze that had quickly charred 11.5 square miles yesterday afternoon. Regional president Isabel Díaz-Ayuso called it the worst in Madrid's history, while Francisco Martín, the central government representative for the region of Madrid, said that 20,000 people had been ordered to shelter at home in towns west of the capital.
Firefighters in Lege-Cap-Ferret yesterday (Reuters)
Smoke and flames rise near La Adrada, Avila province, Spain (AP)
Mr Martín said more evacuations could be coming and that the priority now was to protect the town of San Lorenzo, the home of the Escorial, Philip II's 16th-century royal palace and monastery.
Meanwhile, a blaze in Ávila, less than two hours northwest of Madrid, had consumed 34 square miles, causing another 1,500 people to flee. Spain's Civil Guard arrested one man and is investigating another for allegedly having used heavy machinery in an area where it was prohibited for fire risk. Police believe a spark ignited the fire on Thursday.
Spanish interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that Italy and Greece are each sending two Canadair water-dumping aeroplanes.
Francisco Martínez, the mayor of Burgohondo, whose residents were preventively evacuated in Ávila, told Spain’s national broadcaster TVE: “In my 60 years I have never seen something like this in my village, I have never seen fire of these dimensions.”
Spanish television showed video taken by retreating residents of walls of flames topped by long plumes of smoke advancing through woods and scrublands. High winds and hilly terrain complicated efforts by firefighters, who combated the blazes with firetrucks and bulldozers.
In southwest France, authorities sent boats to help the evacuation and a total of about 63,000 people, many of them tourists, were told to get out as two major, separate fires threatened homes and campsites, officials said.
"From our home, we had a view of the fires ... We could see the clouds becoming darker and darker," said Yoan Urien, who left late on Thursday after police told everyone in his neighbourhood in the town of Biscarrosse to leave.
"I was able to find somewhere to take shelter with my pets, but ... it's quite a shock," the 26-year-old told Reuters.
The other major fire, which began in nearby Saumos, north of Cap Ferret, is threatening to cut off the only road out of the peninsula and is the largest so far this season in France, interior minister Laurent Nunez told local television.
Holidaymakers in Arcachon as the Cap-Ferret peninsula is evacuated (AFP/Getty)
A wildfire advances near San Martin de Valdeiglesias, Ávila province (AP)
It has torn through more than 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of forest and burned 80 homes, completely destroying about 50 of them, he said. "It's totally apocalyptic," said Ambre Dubos, from the nearby Landes region.
In one week, Spain has had the worst fires on record for both the regions of Castilla La Mancha and Madrid. Firefighters were still trying to extinguish Spain’s second-largest ever fire in the Guadalajara province of Castilla La Mancha after it had destroyed some 320 square kilometres (120 square miles) over the last week.
Thirteen people were also killed in a fire in southern Spain earlier this month, the deadliest fire in recent memory for Spain. Spanish minister for the ecological transition Sara Aagesen said that Spain has seen 1,140 square kilometres (440 square miles) already burned this year, more than five times the burned terrain it had through the first half of 2025.
Mr Grande-Marlaska said that in addition to the major fires in Madrid and in Ávila that have required the national government to get directly involved, there are nine serious fires in other parts of Spain.
A Canadair drops water over a burning area as a wildfire flares in Sagana in the territory of Monreale, Sicily (AFP/Getty)
Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez called on Wednesday for a pact between political parties to fight climate change that he said is key to adapting to a more fire-prone climate. Spain has experienced record temperatures in recent summers and forest fires of increasing violence.
In Italy, wildfires continued to ravage parts of Sicily, with the central-western province of Agrigento particularly hard hit. Fueled by temperatures that have topped 40C, low humidity and winds, the blazes have forced scattered evacuations and were blamed for the death of a firefighter responding to a fire in Caltanissetta.
Reuters
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towards ceasefire uncertain
Bo Erickson in Washington DC
Iran attacked a region near the airport in Erbil yesterday in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (AFP/Getty)
US missiles struck targets across Iran yesterday as President Donald Trump vowed "major military punishment" for Tehran and its Houthi allies in Yemen, though he once again left open the door to a diplomatic deal with Iran.
Two weeks after the collapse of an interim truce meant to end the war, the Iranian armed forces responded by firing at US bases in neighbouring Arab countries and warning people there that they may strike non-military buildings used by US personnel.
Mr Trump told reporters at the White House yesterday: "We are talking to them. I think they're being serious. I think ... they are being by far the most serious that we've seen them, but that doesn't mean we get there."
Asked what is the exit strategy for the Iran war, Mr Trump said: "There's a military exit where we just keep going just the way we are, and we can even make it a heavier dose, and it's knocking out everything they have. Or there's a smarter strategy that you make a deal." But he added: "We're locked and loaded. We're ready to go."
After the Houthis said they had struck two Saudi tankers on Thursday, Mr Trump said he would hold Iran accountable for any further attacks by the fighters.
The entrance to the Gulf has so far been the focus of a war that has killed thousands in almost five months, stoked global inflation and fanned fears of an economic downturn.
The Houthis, who control northern and western Yemen, have announced a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, which has diverted millions of barrels of oil each day by pipeline to the Red Sea to skirt Iran's near-total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Several strikes hit Yemen's Hodeidah port, eyewitnesses said. Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV said Saudi Arabia had carried out the attacks.
A US strike on an Iranian military complex, according to Centcom (US Centcom)
The US military launched airstrikes on Iran late on Thursday and early yesterday, for a 13th consecutive night of attacks, prompting Iran to fire at neighbouring Arab countries that host US bases.
US missiles struck a Revolutionary Guards Navy headquarters in the Ziba Kenar area of the Caspian Sea province of Gilan, according to a security official in Gilan quoted by Iranian media. Provincial authorities said US projectiles had also struck the port city of Bandar Anzali, according to the ILNA news agency.
Four people were killed and five injured in a US attack on the Iranian city of Ahvaz, the state broadcaster IRIB said. In a statement carried by Iran's Fars news agency, the Revolutionary Guards warned the populations of Gulf countries of potential strikes against US military personnel who may be using "buildings in cities as locations to direct their crimes".
Mr Trump told Axios on Thursday he was considering re- launching major combat against Iran. "They haven't received enough pain yet," the US news outlet quoted him as saying.
In a statement on X, the Iranian health ministry said 59 people had been killed and 666 wounded since the resumption of clashes with US forces in late June. Iranian media cited the head of Iran's top joint military command as saying Iran would kill a member of the US forces for every Iranian killed.
The war `has killed 18 US service members. The Pentagon said on Monday that 100 service members had been injured since 7 July and 96 per cent have returned to duty. Officials have told Reuters that more than 500 US troops have been injured so far.
Reuters
The attack on the Saudi tankers on Thursday in the Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb Strait boosted oil prices 7 per cent to top $100 per barrel for the first time since May. However, by around 1600 GMT yesterday, Brent futures were down more than $4 to a little over $96.
Sources said Pakistan was exploring a path towards a resumption of stalled talks between the US and Iran over ending the war, following a push initiated by China. Exploratory discussions took place during a visit by Iran's interior minister Eskandar Momeni to Islamabad this week — his second within the last 10 days.
Meanwhile, the Houthi attacks forced several other tankers to turn around and head north through the Suez Canal, potentially using a much longer route to reach Asia by sailing around Africa. Shipping insurance costs through the southern Red Sea doubled for some companies on Thursday, sources said. Still, half of the 18 ships exiting Bab el-Mandeb on Thursday were carrying crude oil, including two Chinese supertankers. The number of tankers crossing through the Strait of Hormuz fell to just one on Thursday, the lowest since 7 May.
World
One man is set to lose an eye, while another has a pellet embedded near a critical blood vessel.
Shweta Sharma reports on the Dehli security forces’ use of the controversial weapons
Shaikh Irshad Mansoori in hospital after he was injured during student protests in Delhi (Supplied/AFP/Getty)
t happened within seconds. Scores of pellets shredded Shaikh Irshad Mansoori’s face, neck, and shoulder as Gen Z protesters took to the streets of Delhi demanding reform of India’s education system, only to face police batons, teargas and, in some cases, pellet guns.
I
One of the pellets is still inside Mansoori’s body. It’s lodged too close to a critical blood vessel near his neck to be safely removed, doctors have told him, and he may have to live with it for the rest of his life.
Mansoori, 25, was marching alongside thousands of protesters to India’s parliament on 20 July when he says he was fired at from close range with a pellet gun, a controversial weapon capable of discharging hundreds of tiny balls of lead in a single shot.
He’s one of four people believed to have suffered pellet injuries during a brutal police crackdown that has drawn international criticism and failed to deter a youth-led movement that represents a major challenge to the authority of the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
The Delhi police have denied using pellet guns during the crackdown and issued a “fake news alert” on the claim, while another branch of the security forces has said it is investigating the reports.
Mansoori, who works at a multinational company in Gurugram near Delhi, said he had travelled about 30 miles to the national capital that day for visa-related work and decided to briefly join the march on his way.
The march was called by the Cockroach Janata Party, a youth-led movement that has been protesting for more than a month to demand the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over an exam paper leak that affected over two million
As the protesters defied restrictions and marched towards the parliament, police and paramilitary forces used teargas and batons. The clashes left more than 60 protesters and 118 police personnel injured, according to local media.
Mansoori in hospital ahead of his surgery (Supplied)
Mansoori’s friend, who asked not to be named, described how the incident unfolded as Mansoori was still finding it difficult to speak at length following surgery to remove pellets from his body.
The friend told The Independent that Mansoori was with a group of marchers near Jantar Mantar, the main protest site, when police fired teargas and charged them with batons.
“Everyone was walking peacefully when police began firing teargas. People started feeling the smoke in their throats and eyes,” he said. “Irshad went ahead to plead with the security personnel not to hit them, saying they were only students, when a force member in blue pointed a gun at him.”
“Multiple pellets struck me and I felt a stinging sensation near my eyes,” Mansoori said. “Pellets pierced through my right eye and down onto my cheek and nose. I could taste blood, and I began bleeding from everywhere.”
Mansoori after pellets were removed from his face (Supplied)
Mansoori, who is from the central state of Madhya Pradesh and lives alone in Gurugram, was taken to hospital by fellow protesters.
He asked his family not to travel to Delhi, saying he was being looked after by friends. “He had three or four pellets that penetrated deep into his body. One was close to his eye, another deep in his neck, and one near his nose. Another hit his scalp, but that one didn’t cause much damage,” his friend said.
“Initially, the doctors said he would need three or four separate surgeries but the teams worked together and removed almost all the pellets in a single operation. Only one pellet, near his neck,
Mansoori fears living with the pellet lodged in his body forever. “We asked what would happen to that pellet. The doctors said it would stay there for the rest of his life. We asked if they could guarantee nothing would happen because of it, but they said they could not make any guarantees, only that it would remain there permanently,” his friend said.
Pellet-firing shotguns were first used in the restive Himalayan region of Kashmir in 2010 to suppress anti-India protests, with authorities describing them as “non-lethal” crowd-control weapons. In 2018, the government acknowledged in parliament that 17 people had been killed by pellet guns in Kashmir during the previous two years.
More recently, Indian forces were accused of using pellet guns during the 2024 protests by farmers, though the police denied the allegations.
Not far from where Mansoori was shot at, Sahil Lohchab was leading a group of protesters with the Indian flag in his hand when he was similarly injured. The 20-year-old Delhi University student is most likely to turn “completely blind in his right eye” from pellet injuries, his friend, Shivam Reddy, told The Independent.
Lohchab wanted to join the police himself and sat for an entrance exam earlier this year. It’s an irony not lost on his family friends, given a permanent visual or hearing impairment can disqualify a person from ever joining the service.
Reddy said that Lohchab was leading a group of about 500 protesters when he was injured at around 3.30pm.
“He ran towards police and RAF to tell them to not attack them as they were protesting peacefully, but police likely perceived
him as a threat and directly targeted him,” he said. “He was shot with a pellet gun. The pellets dispersed and hit him multiple times across his body and face.”
“There is only one per cent chance his eye could be saved, the doctors have told us,” Reddy said, adding that a doctor also confirmed his injuries were from a pellet gun.
Sahil Lohchab’s friends and family say he only has a slim chance of regaining vision in his eye (Supplied)
Lohchab was moved from the Lady Hardinge Medical College hospital to the Safdarjung Hospital and even a private hospital but he couldn’t be treated due to his condition, Reddy said. “We then took him to AIIMS (the All India Institute of Medical Sciences) where he was admitted and he underwent surgery to have the pellets removed, including from his eye,” he said.
Lohchab’s friends expressed dissatisfaction with the Cockroach Janta Party – the group leading the protests – for not helping them or even reaching out to them.
“We went out for our country, but the Cockroach Janta Party should have at least tried to ask about the wellbeing of Sahil, who
Lohchab’s friends have launched a fundraiser to pay for his treatment and rehabilitation. “We seek support from the people, the government and campaigners for Sahil,” he said.
The Independent has reached out to the Rapid Action Force for comment by email. Attempts to reach its office by phone were unsuccessful.
The Rapid Action Force is the riot-control wing of the Central Reserve Police Force, the country’s largest paramilitary.
Lohchab after surgery to remove pellets from his face and chest (Supplied)
The Central Reserve Police Force said they had initiated an inquiry to ascertain the exact sequence of events following reports of pellet injuries to students.
“We are comprehensively enquiring into the whole gamut of events. It will be premature to comment now,” a spokesperson told the Indian Express on Friday.
The Delhi police denied that its personnel forces had used pellet guns against the protesters, saying such claims were “completely false and misleading”.
“Delhi police neither possess pellet guns nor do they use them in the ongoing protest. The public is requested not to share or circulate any unverified or misleading information,” they said in an X post.
The two other people who reportedly suffered pellet injuries during the march have chosen to remain anonymous. One was said to be a reporter from Outlook magazine who was hit in the back and an arm.
He said he saw a security personnel raise a gun towards the crowd and turned his back. “I saw it aimed at me and immediately ran,” he told his magazine.
“Something struck my backpack and my arm. If I hadn’t turned, it could have hit my chest or my face.”
“The people were pelting stones and the police were lobbing teargas cans,” he later told Scroll. “Then I saw them deploying pellet guns. I saw one personnel pointing a pellet gun at me. I turned around and started running and was hit in my back and hand.”
His prescription from a government hospital mentions “26 small round wounds” that are “consistent with pellets striking” the right side of his body “at an oblique angle”, according to Scroll.
“The defects cover an area of 32cm x 12cm with inverted margins and circumferential abrasion collars surrounding the individual perforations with patchy bluish coloured contusions surrounding the perforations suggestive of pellet entrance wounds,” it notes.
The alleged use of pellets against student protesters has sparked widespread condemnation.
“The use of pellet guns against protesters began in Kashmir, and now those guns are being deployed in the nation’s capital,” Amitav Ghosh, an award-winning writer, said.
“One clear lesson of recent US and Indian history is that tactics that originate in the ‘periphery’ will eventually be used in the centre as well.”
Harsh Mander, author and activist, questioned who put pellet guns in the hands of the Rapid Action Force. “Does no one in the security establishment have a conscience?” he asked.
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World
Sonam Wangchuk has ended his hunger strike linked to the ‘Cockroach’ protests in India (X/@Sonam Wangchuk)
Anti-government rallies to continue, say organisers
The Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk ended a 26-day hunger strike yesterday that helped galvanise a youth movement that's become one of India’s largest protests in recent years.
Wangchuk became a rallying point for India’s “Cockroach” protests, which began more than a month ago demanding education reforms after alleged leaks in some of the country’s most competitive entrance exams.
Since then, the movement has tapped into broader public anger over unemployment, government accountability and economic opportunity, drawing professionals, families and activists to demonstrations in New Delhi and cities across the country.
In a post on X, Mr Wangchuk said he ended his fast in the presence of two federal ministers after appeals from dozens of members of parliament and following “a long negotiation on various conditions and in view of possible violence in the country.”
Prime minister Narendra Modi recently addressed the protests for the first time, announcing fast-track courts to prosecute cases involving examination paper leaks. Protest organisers said demonstrations would continue until education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.
Deadly clash kills five near Palestinian village
Four Palestinians and one Israeli were killed near a Palestinian village yesterday in a confrontation that added to a growing toll over recent weeks as Jewish settler violence has intensified against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The incident near the village of Tal, southwest of Nablus, took place as settler attacks on Palestinian villages have increased sharply since the start of the year, according to figures from the United Nations.
Romania shoots down suspected Shahed drone
Romania shot down a drone in its airspace yesterday near the town of Padina, in the east, at around 11 am local time after it entered the country’s airspace, officials said.
The Romanian army said the drone’s origin and purpose is yet to be identified, but chief of staff General Gheorghita Vlad said it appeared to be a Shahed – the Iran-designed attack drones used by Russia against Ukraine.
Earlier in the day an army source told Reuters: “There is an ongoing investigation to determine the origin of the drone. But in this part of the world it is Russia that is the attacker.”
Indian security forces in the restive Himalayan territory of Kashmir detained more than 1,000 people in a sweeping overnight crackdown after suspected militants killed a police officer on Wednesday.
They also demolished the family homes of two alleged militants, Haroon Ganie and Adil Ahmad Thokar, in south Kashmir during the early hours of Thursday. Police said the suspects were associated with the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Ashiq Hussain Qureshi, head constable with the Indian Reserve Police, was on guard duty for Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath cave shrine when he was shot dead in Anantnag town. It was the first casualty in an alleged militant attack in the region this year, with police suspecting the involvement of a Pakistani militant.
In the wake of the killing, security forces detained nearly 700 people in Srinagar, 200 in Budgam, 178 in Baramulla, and 100 in Ganderbal, the Indian Express reported.
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Voices
Trump in Iran, but no one has noticed
Permitting US planes to use RAF airbases to strike Iran flies in the face of British public opinion,
says John Rentoul – but it highlights the bind Andy Burnham is in with the US president
Burnham arrives for work at No 10 North in Manchester yesterday (Getty)
In one of his first decisions as prime minister, Andy Burnham approved the use of British bases by the Americans for strikes against Iran. He continued Keir Starmer’s policy, which was to allow the bases to be used for what the British government calls “defensive” operations in the Middle East, even after Donald Trump escalated military action.
This is significant, and has been somewhat overlooked in the excitement of a new government.
Even today, the commentary on the threat by the Iranian regime to attack RAF Fairford has focused on whether Tehran has the ability to strike that far, rather than on the British decision that prompted that response.
Burnham’s decision – on which Ed Miliband, his foreign secretary, was presumably consulted – is important because it flies in the face of public opinion. A YouGov poll on Wednesday found that 58 per cent of the British public were opposed to allowing the Americans to use British bases, and only 26 per cent supported it.
The question was worded carefully, although no doubt many answers were prompted by sweeping opposition to President Trump or to any military intervention abroad. It asked about permission for the Americans “specifically to launch attacks against missile bases in Iran”, which is the basis on which Richard Hermer, the former attorney general, decided that the strikes were “defensive” and therefore in accordance with international law. We must assume that Ellie Reeves, the new attorney general, takes the same view.
There are those who would argue – and, in previous lives, Starmer, Hermer, Burnham and Miliband might have been among them – that Trump’s ramping up of strikes since the
Here he is as prime minister, authorising military action in a conflict that he warned at the start had parallels with the Iraq war
On the other hand, there is a reasonable case to be made that Iran’s missiles are threatening Gulf allies and international shipping, and that taking out the launchers is therefore defensive. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ threat to RAF Fairford helps that argument.
But it is surprising that it is argued by Burnham, the “left-wing populist”, and Miliband, who as leader of the opposition scuppered Barack Obama’s strikes against Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2013.
Miliband has always distanced himself from what he saw as New Labour’s subservience to America. He opposed the Iraq war, and 10 years later refused to support David Cameron’s strikes to punish Assad for using chemical weapons. Thus, the vote in the House of Commons was lost, and as a result, the US administration abandoned its plan to enforce Obama’s “red line”.
Burnham, on the other hand, voted to join the invasion of Iraq, but regretted it. “I learnt a painful lesson from this experience and, in the years following, tended to vote against taking military action whenever those decisions came before the House,” he wrote in Head North, his part-memoir, part-manifesto published in 2024.
Yet here he is as prime minister, authorising military action in a conflict that he warned at the start had “parallels” with the Iraq war. He agreed with Keir Starmer’s refusal to allow the Americans to use British bases for the initial strikes, but he also
agreed with Starmer’s reversal of that position as soon as Iran launched its missiles and closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation.
So far, that position has held, and it was repeated by a government spokesperson yesterday: “The UK’s approach to the conflict remains the same – we are committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict.”
That last bit is a puzzle, though: in which “wider conflict” are we not involved, as US bombers take off from Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory to strike targets in Iran?
And what happens if President Trump carries out his wild threat last week to blow up power plants and bridges “next week” unless the IRGC “get to the table and negotiate”? That would also blow up the argument that the American strikes are “defensive”.
Burnham and Miliband, advised by Reeves, would then have to withdraw permission again to use British bases.
So far, though, the new prime minister has got away with a pragmatic policy of quiet cooperation with the US administration without provoking anti-American protesters to take to the streets. Burnham’s big tent, his coalition of left and centre, is still intact – for now.
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Voices
Brian Eno, one of Britain’s most pioneering musicians, reveals why he would welcome having a
greater slice of his earnings being taken in tax, for the good of the country
Eno is one of more than 120 British-based millionaires who have signed an open letter asking the prime minister to tax them more (Getty)
Millions of people in our country are regularly unable to buy basic goods like food and toiletries, or to pay for the energy they need. We are the sixth- richest country in the world – but you wouldn’t know it from reading the new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which has found that a record 7.4 million low- income UK households went without essentials over a recent six-month period.
And yet, at the same time, the wealth of the richest people in Britain has increased.
There are now 157 billionaires in the UK, sharing a staggering £784bn in collective wealth. Meanwhile, one in five kids are living in poverty, small businesses are going under, and services are crippled by underinvestment.
I find this level of inequality truly outrageous. That’s why I am proud to be one of the 120 millionaires – alongside the likes of Gary Lineker, screenwriter Richard Curtis, novelist Val McDermid, and ex-City trader Gary Stevenson – who have signed a letter to our new prime minister, asking for him and the newly formed government to tax the very richest people more. We can afford it, the country deserves it, and the people here are worth it.
Beyond a moral case, there is a very clear social and economic one. Increasingly, people who work cannot make ends meet from their daily work, and cannot imagine how their children will benefit from a life that’s better than theirs. It’s a horrible trend where the only way to become wealthier in this country is if you have wealth in the first place.
There is an incorrect assumption that all wealthy people want to pay as little tax as possible; that they don’t see the huge investment and benefit there is to the tax they pay
But still, we prioritise taxing the incomes of those suffering a never-ending cost-of-living crisis, while undertaxing the wealth sitting unproductive at the very top. Sixty-three per cent of tax revenues come from work and consumption, and only four per cent comes from capital.
There is an incorrect assumption that all wealthy people want to pay as little tax as possible; that they don’t see the huge investment and benefit there is to the tax they pay. I can tell you for myself, and for the many other wealthy people that I speak with at Patriotic Millionaires, that this is categorically untrue. Polling conducted by Survation earlier this year paints the same picture, with 88 per cent of UK millionaires stating that they are proud to live in the UK, and 75 per cent willing to pay higher taxes to protect what they are proud of.
There is a growing consensus on this. When 75 per cent of the UK public want to see higher taxes on those who can most afford it; when our public services and infrastructure need investment; when our small businesses need the support they need; and when millionaires are calling for it themselves, what is stopping our new hopeful government from introducing taxes on the super-rich?
With all of my being, I hope our new cabinet will raise my taxes and taxes on the very richest. We ask you, prime minister: as you decentralise political power, you should also redistribute economic power. Extreme wealth sitting idle in the hands of a few should be put to work reducing inequality, investing in sustainable jobs, strengthening hospitals, schools and social care, supporting entrepreneurs with the skills and infrastructure they need, and giving small businesses access to affordable finance.
Our wealth is our country’s secret weapon. Let’s get serious about using it.
Voices
Moving global trade away from the dollar with a new international body would hit American consumers in the pocket – and would be the shock a rogue president needs, says Sean O'Grady
Under Mark Carney, Canada is at the rough end of Donald Trump’s bogus tariffs (AFP/Getty)
Since when, one has to ask, has Donald Trump ever been bothered about “forced labour”, a slightly archaic term which we’d now think of as “modern slavery”?
Not, as we now know, until a crack team of White House archivists and lawyers discovered a clause in the US Trade Act of 1974 that gives him a reason – an excuse – to re-impose a whole raft of his tariffs that were struck out by the Supreme Court in February.
Since then, he’s had to work under a regime of temporary tariffs, which run out now. Hence the new import taxes.
It hardly needs pointing out, but one may as well, that in the UK, Japan, South Korea, Canada, the EU, and other Western economies, “forced labour” is not a widespread phenomenon anywhere in the economy. The Trump administration hasn’t come up with any evidence that such “unreasonable” work practices, as the 1974 law puts it, are tolerated, let alone encouraged by governments that hitherto were regarded as free and functioning democracies.
The British government is not one that “permits any form of forced or compulsory labour”, as US legislation stipulates, and is innocent. We’ve got our problems, for sure, and there are occasional prosecutions; but it is not yet a feature of British society. There is no sweated labour at the Range Rover factory, cynically undercutting proud American workers.
In fact, the most appalling forced labour practice in the world right now is the conscription of young Russians to be sent to certain death in Ukraine by Trump’s friend, Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s new tariffs, announced overnight, are therefore a nonsense.
They are as much a nonsense as they ever were – and, if one could trust the US legal system, these should be struck down just as their predecessors were. That wouldn’t stop Team Trump cooking up some new bogus executive order for the whole sorry cycle to start all over again. So we’re stuck with them.
What has been striking about the tariff wars launched by Trump in April last year is that they’ve not damaged world trade as much as feared. What has happened is an adjustment in trading patterns rather than volume
Once again, the Canadians found themselves being picked on for even more outlandishly dubious treatment. It almost doesn’t matter why, because Trump doesn’t think Canada should be an independent country anyway, and the cause of reconciliation is hopeless. Soon, the remains of the old North America Free Trade Agreement, now USMCA, which proved so mutually beneficial to the US, Mexico and Canada, will be swept away.
We shouldn’t have to get used to this nonsense, but with the US now a rogue nation, the latest twist in the tariff war has to be managed, just as does the dismantling of Nato and the divisive culture wars the US is now funding in what used to be allied nations, but which are now seen as near-enemies in a state of “civilisational decline”.
With Canada on the front line of this economic warfare – not far off outright sanctions – it is only right to recall what Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, pointed out at Davos a few months ago.
He spoke of “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints…
“On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.”
What has been striking about the tariff wars launched by Trump in April last year is that they’ve not damaged world trade as much as feared. What has happened is an adjustment in trading patterns rather than volume, with imports and exports diverted to countries still interested in the boost to economic growth and living standards that free trade engenders.
We know that the World Trade Organisation is now pitifully moribund, and it is time for a new trade organisation that encompasses both the Western intermediates, dynamic emerging markets and the new trade superpowers, India and China – the WTO, minus the USA, if you will.
Trump might retaliate with tariffs. But given that they hurt the American shopper most, that might not be much of a threat in reality. Besides, the new international trade body can reciprocate, too, and start moving global trade out of the dollar, forcing the Americans to live within their means. A new world order, as Carney argued, is coming at us anyway. We might as well start designing it. We might be better off, too.
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Voices
As Bernie Sanders continues to capture hearts and New York’s Zohran Mamdani follows his lead,
the Democratic party mood is upbeat, but middle America is unimpressed, says Jon Sopel
As Trump brings the US and Republicans further to the right, figures like Mamdani pull the other way (@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social)
Exactly 10 years ago, the Democrats gathered in Philadelphia to anoint Hillary Clinton as their candidate for the 2016 presidential election. Finally, eventually, bitterly, she had seen off the challenge of Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist senator from Vermont.
Before he ran, he was little known outside of his own state. He was a bit of a maverick. He didn’t speak so much as bark. He was decidedly grumpy. His politics were way to the left of the Democratic Party establishment. On paper he should have been a quixotic no-hoper. But he ran Clinton very close, and there was a good deal of bad blood about the efforts made to disgrace him.
In Philadelphia that week I met delegates who said they’d rather vote for Donald Trump than for Hillary Clinton. Such is the horseshoe of politics – on a lot of policies, like tariffs, protecting US jobs and economic nationalism Trump and Sanders were not that far apart.
The phenomenon was real. Sanders toured the country attracting huge crowds of mainly young people to his rallies. But then Sanders was pretty much a lone voice. There was no progressive democratic socialist movement, as such. It was Sanders, and no one else.
As Trump has taken the Republicans to the populist right, so Sanders has taken the Democrats to the populist left; to the land of blue Maga. One woman I met in Philly had a banner proclaiming that Hillary had her vote, but Bernie had her heart.
Fast forward to today and it feels increasingly that the Bernie brand of progressive politics has captured the hearts of millions more. And while Bernie Sanders is not the force he was – he’s now 84 years old – there is a cadre of superstar politicians in prominent positions now advocating for this more left-wing worldview.
None more so than the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, whose victory electrified the progressive wing of the party. Most recently, he has demanded that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested for war crimes if he sets foot in New York in September for the United Nations General Assembly – something Donald Trump has dismissed out of hand.
What is striking in the Democratic Party is the way that support for Israel has declined following the traumatic events of 7 October. There are calls from some to ban arms sales to the Jewish state. It is a profound shift.
Some of the other policy prescriptions might not seem that radical to a European audience. Free healthcare at the point of delivery has been the cornerstone of British healthcare since 1948, but in the US it is often seen as akin to communism. Rent freezes – which Mamdani advocates – are seen on the right as a massive interference with the operation of the free market. But he has made it popular.
The problem is that while the sort of policies that Mamdani is advocating in New York might go down well with a more liberal, college-educated voter – how will these policies go down in those swing states where elections are decided like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona?
There’s also been a drive to find candidates who do not conform to the stereotypical, cookie-cutter, square-jawed, smartly turned out, Ivy League alums.
A voter in Philadelphia who voted for Hillary, but had a particular soft spot for the senator from Vermont (Jon Sopel)
In Maine – one of the Democratic Party’s prime targets for the Senate – Dems selected a progressive former oyster fisherman called Graham Platner. He was a rough diamond. He was endorsed by Mamdani and Sanders, seeing off the establishment favourites for the Democratic nomination.
Except it turns out that he has a past more chequered than a gingham tablecloth. There was a sexual assault allegation – one that he says is “false” – there was a tattoo from when he served in the Marines that looked distinctly like the “totenkopf” marking that SS officers had in Nazi Germany – he subsequently apologised for it and removed it, saying that he was unaware of the resemblance at the time. And on and on went the allegations of questionable behaviour.
He was forced to throw in the towel, leaving the Dems scrambling to find a new candidate. But how was it possible that he was ever considered a fit and suitable candidate?
He is not alone. For a New York Congressional seat, the party has chosen a woman called Darializa Avila Chevalier. She has previously called Joe Biden a “rapist” and “war criminal”. She has since said she “regretted” the tweets. She attended a rally in New York on the day after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, which celebrated the killings.
There is a Democratic primary race going on in Michigan – the state with the largest Arab population in the US, that pitches the old Democratic establishment candidate, Haley Stevens, against the progressive insurgent, Abdul El Sayed. The pro-Israel lobbying organisation, AIPAC, has poured millions of dollars into stopping El Sayed. El Sayed’s supporters are framing this as the grassroots versus big lobbying money.
The popularity of Bernie Sanders has led to a slate of other progressives vying for seats in the Senate and congress (Reuters)
All of which has led to a sharpening of knives in the White House where the effort is now in full swing to paint not just these individuals – but the Democratic Party as a whole – as radical, swivel-eyed communist lunatics. Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief propagandist, has it that they will abolish the Constitution, ban judges and kill the firstborn. OK, I made up the last bit. But here is a flavour of what he says America would look like:
“The Democrat party has embraced not only socialism, but they have also embraced communism. Straight-up, outright, full- throated communism. They are now electing candidates who want to take private industry over, give it to the government, suspend the Constitution, abolish the Senate, abolish prisons, abolish jails, abolish the jury system, abolish our entire way of life.”
Over the top? Sure. But there are plenty of old-school Democrats who are terrified that this slate of ultra-progressive candidates could be costly come the midterm elections in November. Then
again, the old establishment Republicans 10 years ago were saying their party could never win with someone like Trump at the top of the ticket. A battle for the centre-ground these midterms will not be.
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Business/Comment
mockery of raising the retirement age
While there is a new focus on younger people not in education, employment or training, there needs to be urgent attention on those in midlife who are out of work and still have over 10 years
W
until they can draw down on a pension, writes Chris Blackhurst
Stacey Duguid has gone viral for talking about her unemployment shame and how AI discriminates against older women in particular (Andrew Woffinden)
e are all familiar with Neets. We usually take the term to mean younger people not in education, employment or training. But should we be broadening the term to include an older cohort?
Social media posts from Stacey Duguid, the ex-fashion editor struggling to find work, have tapped into a common nerve. The 52-year-old has discussed the “silent shame” of being “unemployable”, telling how, in the past 16 months, she has made 150 job applications to no avail. Not only were they rejected, but most were not answered. “The money’s running out, and I’m frightened. And if I’m in this position, maybe you are too?”
Judging by the deluge of replies she received, that hesitancy was uncalled for – there are an awful lot of people in the same boat as her, many of them female. That would figure, since the official research shows that 30 per cent of females aged 50 to 64 are economically inactive in the UK, as opposed to 22 per cent of men.
Those responding to Duguid suggested she remove her age, that AI – which is how CVs are increasingly scrutinised these days – would not automatically bar her. She had to be more subtle than that, not only dodging disclosing the telltale number or date of birth, but deleting two decades’ worth of work history, in the hope she would not be rumbled. To no good effect, she is still waiting.
Duguid’s agony has gone viral. What she’s done is highlight a growing social and economic issue, which is that people need to keep working in order to stay afloat for their financial as well as their physical and mental wellbeing.
Meanwhile, the official retirement age is moving further away. Someone who is made redundant at 50 faces nearly 20 years before they can receive their state pension (rising from 66 to 67 for those born between 6 April 1960 and 5 April 1977, due to climb to 68 for those born after 5 April 1977).
Older workers are having to do the maths to work out how to make their dwindling finances last until retirement (Getty/iStock)
At the same time, there is the heightening pressure from below, from the younger age group coming up, to find work. Sixty-four was once considered the maximum working age, when today that retirement cut-off has been pushed upwards. The government is extending working lives at one end, while being made to confront, thanks to Alan Milburn’s recent landmark report on Neets, a crisis at the other.
Some enlightened employers are realising that the over-50s have much to offer and are happily hiring them. For many job-seekers of this age, though, there is no alternative BUT to retrain, start a business, or become a sole trader. According to the Office for National Statistics, 48 per cent of self-employed folks in the UK are 50 or older. Lyndsey Simpson, CEO of 55/Redefined, a consultancy that promotes the recruitment and retention of older workers, said: “This is the highest proportion in a decade and an 18 per cent increase over the past 10 years.”
There is now a growing industry in advising people on changing careers, retraining, becoming “portfolio” workers, going it alone.
Easier said than done for a lot of people, when they’ve been in one sector, possibly on one path, maybe in one post with one employer, since they left school or university.
Difficult too, when they’ve been used to receiving one salary, and now they’re going into a lesser-paid job or face finding the means to pay for a training course and effectively begin over again. Unless you have some kind of independent support from a spouse or family wealth, the retraining and start-from-scratch dream is out of reach for many.
If they are simply applying for new roles, as Duguid discovered, AI is filtering them out because they’re seen as too old. There is a tendency in these situations to blame AI, as if the bot operates independently, on its own. It doesn’t; the algorithm is written by a human being; it’s a person who programmes the computer. These are the individuals who need to be encouraged to drop their ageism and to be more accepting of what a fiftysomething employee can offer.
People think they’re younger and have much to offer and need to work, but instead they’re being told they are too old, not wanted, discounted and can’t find work
Again, not so readily achievable, when the older person may not be so familiar with technology, could be set in their ways, used to working in a certain manner and might not, let’s face it, take too kindly to receiving instruction or being told what to do by someone younger. They may well have achieved a level of seniority in their former job and so struggle to adjust to a very different set of circumstances.
This is while they might be required to cope with all else that life brings at the more advanced age, from caring for older relatives and helping out with student finances for their offspring and grandchildren, to dealing with age-related ailments.
Of course, they may be feeling younger than they are. New analysis by RBC Wealth Management finds that is generally the case: 72 per cent of 45- to 75-year-olds in the UK say they feel younger than their actual age by an average of nine years. So, 60- year-olds see themselves as 51. Many, 35 per cent, believe their best years are still ahead of them (more than one in 10, 13 per cent, of those surveyed think it is likely they will live to 100).
What we have here is a recipe for intense frustration. People think they’re younger and have much to offer and need to work, but instead they’re being told they are too old, not wanted, discounted and can’t find work.
Just as there is not a magic formula for resolving the problems school leavers and graduates face, so there is not one for those falling off the jobs ladder at the other end. They both need heavy applications of similar medicine: more training courses, more instruction in tech skills, more incentives for bosses to employ them in permanent positions. That demands money and a growing economy, two things that go together and, right now, are in short supply.
As a beginning, Milburn should add a supplementary chapter to his excellent thesis and look at the over-50 Neets. Quickly, because, as with those covered by his report, for this group too, the clock is ticking and the numbers affected are steadily building.
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Sport/Commonwealth Games
100m final with fastest qualifying time
Mark Staniforth
Adam Ramsay-Peaty competing in the heats in Glasgow yesterday (Reuters)
Adam Ramsay-Peaty, three-time Olympic gold medal winner, won the Men’s 100m breaststroke semi-final in a time of 59.19 yesterday. Fellow Englishman Gregory Butler, who finished third, also made the final with a time of 1.00.12. Filip Nowacki of Jersey came second with a time of 59.52 seconds,
Earlier, Ramsay-Peaty shrugged off a bizarre delay to power through to the semi-finals of the men’s 100 metres breaststroke event at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Ramsay-Peaty’s heat was temporarily halted as he was on the blocks when a lane divider broke off, requiring an official to strip
The start of the heat involving Adam Peaty (not pictured) was delayed (Getty)
Ramsay-Peaty duly wasted no time in recording the fastest time of the morning, 59.46 seconds, with only two rivals, Australia’s Sam Williamson and Filip Nowacki of Jersey, also finishing in under a minute.
The three-time Olympic champion is taking part in his fourth Commonwealth Games having clinched his first medals as a 19- year-old in Glasgow in 2014.
Since then he has become a fixture of the gossip columns after marrying Holly Ramsay, daughter of celebrity chef Gordon, in December last year, and experiencing a rift with the majority of his family.
Ramsay-Peaty has described these Games as a “full circle moment” as he looks to reignite his career. A silver medal at the Paris Olympics in 2024 helped him refocus after a difficult 2023 in which he withdrew from a series of events in order to focus on mental health concerns.
Adam Ramsay-Peaty eased through his 100m heat in Glasgow (PA)
His win in the 100m in 2014 began eight years of almost total dominance in the event. That streak came to an end in dramatic fashion in Birmingham four years ago when he trailed home in a shock fourth place in the event.
Ramsay-Peaty told TNT Sports: “Job done, really. We’ve got a busy two weeks coming up, so we’re reserving energy where we can. Last time I was here, I was very young. We barely had any world records to my name, or known world records to my name, so it’s been a very long journey.”
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Sport/Football
Manchester United have left season-ticket holders feeling dispensable, writes Will Castle, after a
‘ban first and ask questions later’ approach to the club’s draconian crackdown on touting
Hundreds of Man United season-ticket holders have seen their accounts restricted after a crackdown (Getty)
eet Ruairi. He’s a six-year-old Manchester United fan and is football bonkers. He lives five minutes from the ground and is already a regular in the Stretford End. He was a mascot for the 2-1 win over Crystal Palace earlier in the year; he’s been on away days to Seville, Istanbul and Bilbao.
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This same six-year-old superfan is now under suspicion of ticket touting. Under a widespread club probe, his account has been restricted pending a review. The future of his precious season ticket is up in the air.
Ruairi is not a ticket tout.
“It’s scandalous,” his mother Kate, a season-ticket holder for 19 years, told The Independent. “You can put so much worry [on the situation]. We can’t tell our son that he’s not going to United. It’s our life, it’s what we do. It’s where I met my husband. It’s what we do every weekend together as a family. He’s obsessed.”
His dad Gary added: “If we told him he couldn’t go to games, he’d be devastated. Absolutely devastated.”
His is just one nightmare realised among reportedly thousands of loyal matchgoing supporters over the past few days. Racked with anxiety, fans who claim to have followed the club across the continent for decades say they’re at risk of having such a significant part of their weekly routine severed, for reasons that are anything but exclusive to touts.
Ruairi with mum Kate and dad Gary (The Independent)
Ruairi’s situation in particular picked up serious traction amid a social media frenzy. Kate’s post drawing attention to his plight had been viewed by 1.9 million people at the time of writing. As fans abandoned any sort of tribalism, the response was unanimous: fury.
United have not maliciously targeted a six-year-old – nobody is alleging that. Instead, it’s the methods for weeding out touts that are coming under significant scrutiny. The club believe supporters affected have only been contacted if there is a technical anomaly consistent with behaviour used by touts – but rather than investigate this further before causing immense panic and stress, United have been accused of a “ban first and ask questions later” process by supporter groups such as the Manchester United Supporters Trust (Must).
A near-identical email, seen by The Independent, has been sent around to hundreds of fans by Man United, who say they have identified “patterns linked to access to your ticketing account
information did Manchester United ask from its members under review?
An explanation for activity indicating that your account has been accessed or managed by a third party that also appears to access at least 6+ other Manchester United ticketing accounts, or why you have accessed or managed at least 6+ other accounts. A list of the devices you regularly use to access your account. Confirmation of whether your account is accessed from multiple locations and, if so, details of those locations. A brief explanation of how your account is normally accessed and managed. A copy of valid photographic identification for account verification purposes. This would not be stored on file following verification.
“We can’t apply for Hull away, so whether you like to say the word ban or not, you’ve banned my six-year-old because he can’t apply for Hull away now,” Kate fumed, with the appeal process set to take at least a month. “He’s
In Ruairi’s case, Kate claimed this anomaly stemmed from her logging into her son’s account. It’s one of 11 accounts of family and friends she has access to, many of whom share logins – for context, anyone who had given their login credentials to more than six different people was flagged by United. They all sit in the same “singing section” of the Stretford End, placed together by design to create atmosphere. This was detailed thoroughly in her appeal.
But until that is reviewed, his account – like all others – has been restricted. It’s not yet a sanction nor an outright ban, with United insisting they are “not assuming any wrongdoing”. That won’t be how it feels on the first day of the Premier League season, though.
There is a feeling within Must that the current blanket action being taken is completely disproportionate. “Effectively banning people and asking them to prove they shouldn’t be banned … offends against all natural justice,” a spokesperson said.
Must has confirmed to The Independent that it has been in daily private meetings with the club in an effort to “de-escalate” what was described by a spokesperson as “a war on the hardcore fanbase”. It is eager to work collaboratively to eradicate the “common enemy” of touting, which plagues the game and hits the overwhelming majority of regular fans the hardest. But it feels United, who insist there is no ticketing process that requires a supporter to access another person’s account, must change their attitudes towards tackling the issue.
The suspension means Ruairi will miss Man United’s first away game of the season at Hull (Getty)
“We are trying to help them understand what is ‘normal fan behaviour’,” the spokesperson added. “ Groups of fans do share
Whether these efforts result in a club climbdown or not, the fiasco has resulted in another spike in distrust among United’s “often underrepresented” matchgoing support – because the money does not come from them.
Under United’s new categorised ticketing system (different prices for different matches) introduced before last term, the price discrepancy between a season ticket and 19 individual Premier League home tickets sold to a general member has gone from being minimal to hundreds of pounds. If standard seats are converted into hospitality seating – as happened in the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand before last season, which moved around 500 season-ticket holders – potential profits go stratospheric. The club has made a reduction to its season ticket allocation in recent years – from around 53,000 in 2019 to approximately 47,000 now, despite the 25-year waiting list – and there are fears the contingent will be chipped away at further.
“100 per cent, they don’t want us,” Kate asserts. “They don’t want the working-class fan, they don’t want your standard season-ticket holders, and it’s a shame because until it happens, they won’t realise just how much we are the life and soul of the club.”
Must insist it is ‘normal fan behaviour’ for families and friends to share logins for each other’s ticketing accounts, regardless of the club’s terms and conditions (Getty)
Must adds that there has been “a longstanding suspicion that the club want fewer season-ticket holders”.
Man United sources refuted these claims to The Independent, stressing that the process is not being undertaken to drive revenue nor reduce the number of season tickets. The club assures that any season tickets cancelled will be reissued to someone on the waiting list, or with a cup season ticket.
And it’s important to note the Red Devils are far from the only club to be on the end of this criticism. Down the M62, similar sentiments surround fierce rivals Liverpool, whose Anfield Road Stand extension saw nearly two times the extra allocation go towards hospitality rather than season tickets.
As United plunged into a conflict with their core support base, Liverpool announced that £1.2m had been seized from organised ticket touts following a joint investigation with Merseyside Police that led to 432 lifetime bans and 115 indefinite suspensions – 65 of which related to season-ticket holders.
This was sold as a big win in the war with touting. Given what’s going on at Old Trafford right now, you can’t blame any scepticism.
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Sport/Football
Jurgen Klopp is charged with rebuilding the national side after their latest World Cup
disappointment – but he’s in no mood to compromise, finds Will Castle
Klopp told the press yesterday to leave his family in peace, or he will walk away from the job (Getty)
urgen Klopp could have sat back and let the punditry millions roll in. The charisma king of the dugout unsurprisingly made the transition to TV pretty seamlessly for the World Cup, alongside Thomas Muller – the former Germany forward whose penchant for Reels signifies that the permanent shift from footballer to entertainer isn’t too far away.
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But Klopp’s personality is of better use in a more serious sector of the German football landscape.
As the team dabs its wounds after a dismal last-32 World Cup exit to Paraguay, the wait to win a knockout-stage match since their 2014 triumph goes on. Julian Nagelsmann failed to galvanise the country’s national team, like Hansi Flick did before him – two tactical aficionados and objectively fine managers, but that’s where it ends. They lacked a certain... aura.
Klopp doesn’t have that issue. At each of his three clubs, he has left as a deified figure, and for good reason – everywhere he goes, he ushers in a new period of glory. He guided Mainz to the Bundesliga for the first time in their history; he won back-to- back titles with Borussia Dortmund after seven years of failing to break the top four; and at Liverpool, he awoke a sleeping giant and won everything there was to win, including a first Premier League in 30 years.
His rock’n’roll style of football makes any team he manages easy to root for. “There are 11 nations ahead of us in the rankings – but we have to make beating them possible, with the way we play football,” Klopp vowed at the press conference where he was officially unveiled as Nagelsmann’s successor. But after years of blandness at the German helm, his presence alone will breathe life into a stalled setup.
Klopp has been Germany’s dream appointment for a decade. He was envisaged as the successor to Joachim Low, taking the
World Cup-winning team he built and keeping them at the top. That isn’t Klopp’s style, though – at no point in his career has he arrived to do a maintenance job; it’s always been to rebuild and reinvent. It’s why persistent rumours of a Real Madrid or Bayern Munich move never felt right for him.
TV star: Klopp spent time as a pundit during the World Cup (Getty)
Now that Germany need him, he has risen from his Red Bull- funded slumber. “I’m not doing this job for myself. I’m doing it for you,” he said, playing into the “messiah” gimmick.
He is not the same man who ruled German football at the Westfalenstadion; he now has new teeth and new eyes for a start. He also has a much bigger trophy cabinet bolted to the wall. But his personality is largely the same, only moving with the extra swagger that comes with such success.
With that personality comes a certain volatility; he’s a man who doesn’t fear ruffling feathers. He is not universally beloved by any stretch; rival fans grew tired of his complaining, excuses and perceived preferential treatment by referees. More recently, he experienced fierce backlash and “sellout” accusations in his
homeland for taking his head of global soccer role at Red Bull, with German fans despising the organisation’s multi-club model and effective circumvention of the 50+1 rule, which guarantees supporter voting rights at clubs.
His Germany unveiling, therefore, wasn’t all hugs and kisses. Klopp went as far as to issue a warning to the country’s press and public: he is not going to tolerate what has been the curse of the job for 12 years.
“I’m taking this job even though I’ve seen how you’ve treated Julian Nagelsmann,” he said bluntly. “I’m taking it even though I’ve seen how you’ve treated Thomas Tuchel.
Klopp: ‘Ideally, this is the highlight of my career’ (AP)
"The day you don’t want me any more, I’m gone – without any severance pay. If you say tomorrow that he’s shit, I’m gone. Not just one person, it would have to be more than that. If the DFB [German Football Association] says he’s shit, I’m gone.
“If you behave badly and don’t leave my family in peace, I’m gone. Criticise me if something doesn’t work. I’m happy to work on it. It’s all about the job.”
This no-nonsense attitude will carry over to the dressing room and the training ground. Germany’s failure to perform under the pressure of knockout football reflects a sombre shift in the setup’s culture. Anything but a “mentality monster” will surely not last under his regime.
But Klopp will not be able to revive Germany on his own. He will build his coaching staff around former Liverpool assistants Pep Lijnders and Peter Krawietz in a bid to emulate his Anfield glory. There were fantasies about this rivalry being renewed on the international stage amid Guardiola’s talks with Italy, only for the Catalan to say no to Paolo Maldini and co.
Taking his country back to the global pinnacle feels like the rightful culmination of Klopp’s glittering career. Whether he achieves that or just papers over the cracks, this will be it for him in the dugout. “Jurgen Klopp doesn’t have a career after the national team. Ideally, this is the highlight of my career.”
When they meet traditional rivals the Netherlands in his first match in September, we’ll get a first glimpse into whether this particular Klopp fairytale can come true. At Euro 2028, in the country he conquered as Reds boss, legacy will be on the line.
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Sport/Formula One
T
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso is on the cusp of retirement but is holding out for one
more Adrian Newey miracle car, writes Kieran Jackson
Now aged 44, the Spaniard is in his 23rd F1 season (Reuters)
hey say seeing is believing. And seeing the leaderboard in qualifying last weekend at Spa- Francorchamps, specifically the initial phase, really did take some believing.
For a team whose underlying goal was to be a Formula One world championship contender in 2026, Aston Martin’s opening 10 races have been nothing short of a calamity. From “nerve damage” safety concerns at the season opener in Australia to countless power unit failures, Aston’s new partnership with Honda has been woeful. What’s more, they previously used Mercedes engines, by far and away the most powerful on the grid in the sport’s new electrical energy-focused era.
And in Q1 at the last race in Belgium, Aston drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were both more than two seconds slower than the next-slowest car, new team Cadillac, and more than four seconds off the frontrunners. Their lap times were closer to the 107 per cent time – ie, the minimum time required to start the race – than pole position.
Alonso, now in his 23rd F1 season, has made no secret that he is still in the sport in the hope that Aston can provide him with a car capable of winning a third world championship, two decades after his successive titles with Renault. Yet, on the contrary, the 44-year-old has been languishing hopelessly at the back these past few months. It has been painful viewing.
Admirably, the Spaniard still holds out hope that the great Adrian Newey can give him one last miracle. “They take time, but I have no doubts Adrian will provide the best car on the grid sooner or later,” Alonso said on Thursday, ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final round before the customary summer recess. “I would like to see the first steps with this package.”
Aston Martin have been lying hopelessly at the back so far this season (Getty)
And while long overdue, this is one monumental package coming to the Hungaroring this weekend. Aston confirmed on Friday morning that their upgraded car contains 16 – count ’em! – different parts, including front and rear wings, sidepods, the floor and the rear suspension.
It is essentially a brand new car. Mumblings in the paddock suggest it could add up to a second a lap of performance and, while Aston need considerably more than that to challenge at the top, it would represent one massive leap.
Initial impressions? Not great. Stroll spun out in FP1 with a rear suspension issue which was so severe that he could not take part in second practice later in the day. And Alonso’s quickest lap was only good enough for P19 in FP2. Proper proof will come in qualifying today.
“Budapest is a friendly circuit for us,” Alonso stated on Thursday. “Power is not the most important here, but we update the car and not the engine yet. I am more into the weekend, understanding the direction of the car, if we are in a good path
With Alonso already admitting that he will be thinking hard about his future over the August break – his contract expires at the end of the season – this weekend is pivotal for Aston’s chances of retaining their star driver. In fact, it is a last-chance saloon.
“It became quite obvious very quickly that we were not going to be competitive in the early races,” Newey said at Silverstone, three weeks ago. “We took the painful but, I believe, correct decision to not do any developments through the first half of the year, knowing that that would actually mean, as everybody else develops, of course, the gap to the front would actually get bigger.
Lance Stroll and Alonso have been off the pace in the opening 10 races (Getty)
“But, with a view to then really getting ourselves better organised, putting lots of different systems into place for the future, and then really doing our research properly, because the ’26 car was a very competitive timescale.
“So, it’s enabled us to step back a bit, take a bit of pressure off ourselves, because I think we actually put ourselves under too much pressure over the winter, and take a deep breath, and really understand our problems, what we need to achieve, [with] this upgrade package that we go to Hungary as the first stage, the second stage in Zandvoort [the first race after the summer break].”
Of course, Honda must get their act together with their power unit, too. Alonso insists he “has no doubts” that will happen, despite a previously bad experience driving a Honda car with McLaren a decade ago. Whether the Japanese company can really catch the other manufacturers – Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Audi – remains to be seen.
But, despite the appetite for mockery, the sport will be better served if Aston can find some speed. F1 is a greater product when its truly top-tier drivers are fighting competitively at the front. We’ve seen that with Lewis Hamilton’s renaissance this season.
Alonso is undoubtedly one of those drivers. And, whether it be naivety or genuine hope, he still believes Newey can give him one final glorious swansong to send him off into the sunset with fulfilment. And, to his credit, Alonso has been pedalling this bike for quite some time now. As a reminder: he has not won a race in 13 years.
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Sport
Rodri lifts the Golden Ball award after winning the World Cup with Spain. The midfielder has been linked with a move away from Man City (Getty)
Maresca confirms Rodri surgery details
Enzo Maresca has confirmed that Rodri will undergo surgery on Monday but addressed speculation that the Spaniard might leave Manchester City, insisting “he will be back with us” when he recovers. World Cup champion and Golden Ball winner Rodri has been linked with a move away, having opened the door to a return to Madrid earlier in the year. However, his main focus will be on an upcoming minor back surgery, which is expected to rule him out for the start of the Premier League season.
Maresca, speaking in his first press conference as City boss, is not worried about the transfer talk and confirmed he wants to keep the midfielder for his first season. “First of all I have to say, that around big players there are always speculations so I am not
worried about that,” Maresca said. “I think it is normal, also because they won the World Cup, because he is one of the best players. I think every manager wants to have Rodri because he is a top player. But now, surgery on Monday. He needs a holiday, he needs to rest and recover and then he will be back with us.”
Maresca did recognise that City still have “a few things to do” in the transfer window but refused to be drawn into conversation about the futures of Jack Grealish and James Trafford. On his own departure from Chelsea, he said he had “nothing to add” after the Blues effectively blamed his abrupt resignation for their dismal 2025-26 season upon him joining City.
Fury win brings Joshua clash closer
Tyson Fury eased past Mariusz Wach yesterday, beating the 46- year-old in a bizarre fight behind closed doors. With that, there is one hurdle fewer to Fury’s long-awaited clash with Anthony Joshua. Wach quit on his stool after seven rounds in Thailand, where Fury faced the Pole in a non-televised bout, which is expected to feature on season three of At Home With The Furys – a Netflix reality show about the boxer and his family.
According to media reports, Fury controlled the action in the Max Muay Thai Stadium in Pattaya, fighting well while going backwards and using his jab to dictate the pace. Although Wach had his moments, including a big right hand that seemed to surprise Fury in round two, the Pole was no match for the Briton.
Joshua is due to fight Albanian unknown Kristian Prenga at Jeddah Superdome in Saudi Arabia today. A win would set up a long-awaited clash with Fury, potentially at Wembley Stadium in November.
Hamilton sets fastest time in Hungary
tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton heads into the concluding round before Formula One’s three-week summer shutdown trailing Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli by 45 points.
The Briton has won at the Hungaroring eight times. And on the evidence of practice, he is firmly in the mix to deliver a ninth triumph with Ferrari holding a clear advantage over their rivals. His teammate Charles Leclerc set the pace in the opening running before Hamilton returned later in the day to finish 0.148 seconds clear. World champion Lando Norris was a distant third in his McLaren, half a second adrift of Hamilton. PA
Swan gets England’s gold rush under way
Mark Swan won England’s first gold medal of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games with a dramatic victory in the men’s lightweight category of the men’s para powerlifting. Swan lifted 222kg, more than three times his body weight, with his second lift to finish tied with Nigeria’s Roland Ezuruike going into the final round. Both athletes failed with their final lifts, leaving Swan to take gold based on a coefficient format related to the respective athletes’ body weight.
Two-time Paralympic champion and 72kg world record holder Bonnie Gustin of Malaysia finished third, just 0.4 points behind his two rivals.
Pogacar breaks Alpe d’Huez record
Tadej Pogacar conquered the famed hairpins of the Alpe d’Huez in a record time yesterday as he won stage 19 of the Tour de France to extend his overall lead. The Slovenian was timed at 35 minutes and 27 seconds over the 13.8km climb, smashing the previous record of 36 minutes 55 seconds set by Marco Pantani in 1997.
taking his fifth stage win of this Tour and the 26th of his career. He closed a three-and-a-half-minute gap to catch Richard Carapaz and Lenny Martinez with 1.8km to go before dropping them inside the final 1,000 metres. It saw Pogacar extend his overall lead to seven minutes 11 seconds over Remco Evenepoel, who himself attacked inside the last 4km to strengthen his grip on second. PA
James joins 76ers for his 24th season
LeBron James is joining the Philadelphia 76ers for his record- extending 24th NBA season. He posted a video to Instagram announcing his decision yesterday after weeks of rampant speculation over his NBA future.
“This is my last decision. I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship,” James wrote on social media. “I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energise a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.”
James, 41, is set to sign a modest $8m (£6m), two-year contract with the Sixers, according to ESPN. He made nearly $53m last season. Reuters
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The Magazine/Feature
T
After researching the 1976 heatwave for her latest novel, Charlotte Edwardes reflects on how
authors use soaring temperatures to change our sense of time, space and place
The UK is currently in its third heatwave of the year – which is taking its toll (AFP/Getty)
he children running screaming across a Welsh beach in July 1976 were trying to escape from a terrifying swarm of ladybirds, the reports said. They were trailing children who’d been paddling in the sea and playing in the sand, nipping painfully at sweaty flesh seeking hydration. It’s the sort of story you’d find in Seventies fiction, a twist in the natural order of things. Because usually ladybirds are symbols of benevolence; an insect introduced in childhood, stamped on learning books, cut out in coloured paper on the walls of playgroups, the subject of nursery rhymes.
When the legendary 1976 heatwave hit 50 years ago, the world was somehow inverted. The sun pulsed for 16 weeks on land used to clouds and rain. The strange ladybird behaviour seemed to sum up the disorientation of much of the wildlife. They throbbed in fields four miles inland, 50,000 an acre, one eyewitness estimated, and in thermals over the Norfolk coastline, surprising gliders who collided into them at 3,000 feet.
The 1976 UK heatwave scorched through people’s sensibilities; tops came off and shorts were worn (Getty)
The attack of the ladybirds was a detail I came across while researching the summer of 1976 for my new novel Trouble Was. It’s set over nine months that year and told by Frank, nine, who, along with his siblings, aged four and two, is being driven by his mother to stay in north Devon with a paternal aunt and three hostile cousins. Other unbelievable details I learned were that cows got sunburn; that pubs were drunk dry of beer and that there was an ice cream shortage. Before 1976, cut-off shorts were uncommon on adult men and considered “Australian”. I read about the political crises, about stagflation.
In fiction, heatwaves are often disruptive, a driver in periods of social change. The climax of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby takes place on a dripping hot day fraught with boiling class and racial tension. Hierarchies are loosened in the 1900 heatwave of LP Hartley’s The Go-Between, and in Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which opens in the heatwave of 1935. “I love the heatwave in England,” drawls upper-class Leon Tallis. “It’s a different country. All the rules change.” Upstairs, his mother Emily is enervated by migraine, thinking of the “suffocating” farms and towns.
A ‘heat dome’ brought temperatures of 35C to the British Isles in 1976 (PA)
In heat, there is both shift and paralysis.
Across Europe, Spain, Italy and France are baking in temperatures of over 40C, with predictions of 47C being broken. Wildfires are breaking out across western Europe with thousands of people being evacuated. As I type, the UK is in its third heatwave this year. My scalp is damp with sweat, the nape of my neck too, with the spectre of more heatwaves looming.
I have spent some of the hottest days of May and July in a rural cottage down a long dirt track, off the grid, surrounded by sheep, the beady call of swifts, the sound of bees at a passionflower outside the window and a nearby stream. Such an unpolluted landscape transports me to childhood. Because summers and childhood both have a dream-like quality, a febrile restlessness. An unrealness that can be shaped in fiction.
Long hot summers have a slowing, expanding effect on time. The way the school holidays spiral to an unimaginable length of time, the suspension of routine, the shift of focus, the intensity of noticing. In my novel, I tried to recapture the softness of the afternoon light, the hours walking in lanes whipping cow parsley and fern. That sense of being still with a fishing net, ankle-deep in a stream. Of lying on prickly hay bales imagining how a melting ice lolly would feel in the raking heat of the throat.
Summer brings senses alive. There are the smells – of grass, of rosemary, of hot stones and mossy river water, as well as of things on the turn. There are the competing textures of foliage in meadow banks, the sensual languor of everything in accelerated bloom – with all the potent symbolism in fiction for puberty, sex and death.
In heat and in heatwaves in fiction, clothes are loosened and discarded, and characters reveal themselves physically and by their behaviour too
The author, aged 16 months, enjoying a sunny day in Devon (Charlotte Edwardes)
In heat and in heatwaves in fiction, clothes are loosened and discarded, and characters reveal themselves physically and by their behaviour too. Flesh is exposed, thoughts are exposed, people are exposed. In Atonement, Cecilia Tallis peels off her blouse and skirt to plunge into a fountain in front of the son of the family’s cleaner in a moment of erotic charge that is defiant and disruptive. The heat has a heightening effect. Daisy Buchanan blurts out that Gatsby is the only one of them that appears cool in the sweltering heat, unwittingly revealing her true feelings in front of her husband Tom.
As the temperature climbs in my novel, so does the tension and menace within the house where Frank and his siblings are trapped. Their mother is unravelling; their father is away at sea. Under the same roof, their aunt and feral cousins are giving in to abandonment. There is danger, violence, sex.
Heat forces revelation. It creates conditions for illicit sexual adventure. Or indeed sexual awakening. Or both. In The Go- Between, Leo Colson is 13 and on the cusp of puberty at the time of the action. So is furious, hormone-charged Briony Tallis, whose own blurting causes the terrible turn of events in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Similarly in The Cement Garden, the author uses the combination of heatwave and ripening adolescent incestual fantasy against the rotting proximity of death and decay to steer the novel to an operatic conclusion.
Keep cool: the 2007 adaptation of ‘Atonement’ (Universal Studios)
Heat cooks, it melts, it sparks irrational turns. Behaviour in people, as in objects, can bend, warp and twist.
At night, lying in bed with the window open, I can feel the heavy stillness of the outside in. The nights of childhood were velvet and bottomless, the darkness engulfing, as threatening as the ragged edge of an adult’s hot temper.
And there is, of course, a cruel edge to summer. It’s a time of drought, when forests ignite and wildlife burns. Climate change gives summer a new melancholic cast, as it does heatwave fiction. Today the bumblebee population is endangered by extreme temperatures. Tomorrow? The heatwave is no longer something just to be endured, but a malignant existential threat.
‘Trouble Was’ by Charlotte Edwardes is published by Bloomsbury
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The Magazine/Feature
As Andy Burnham sets about making VAT cuts, Lydia Spencer-Elliott is among shoppers who’ve
already swerved the 20 per cent charge on clothes by dressing in outfits meant for kids
Perfect fit: Lydia enjoying drinks with friends in a gingham dress designed for pre-teen girls (Photos Lydia Spencer-Elliott)
he first time I wore a girl’s gingham Primark dress to the pub, I was, frankly, scared. Could you tell I was wearing clothing meant for an 11-year-old? Was it emanating school summer picnic energy? Was my bum exposed? But when I arrived, the outcome was all the more hilarious and unexpected – one of my friends was wearing exactly the same dress from the kids’ section, too.
T
Buying children’s clothes from high street brands including Primark, M&S, H&M, and Zara has boomed in popularity over the past year, thanks to influencers sharing their best purchases on TikTok, with certain items (like my £10 gingham dress) becoming lusted-after viral buys. But many shoppers in the know have seen the appeal of this practice for years: no 20 per cent VAT cost, meaning anyone with small feet or a height under five foot five can enjoy the latest styles for a markedly lower price.
But often, especially with basics, these savings go well beyond the 20 per cent VAT cost, too. Nipping down to my nearest M&S, I go on the hunt for a short-sleeved black T-shirt. I find almost identical products in the girls’ and women’s sections, marked at £4.50 and £9 respectively – a double in price. Additionally, the kids’ T-shirt (aged 13-14 years) is made of 97 per cent cotton and 3 per cent elastane, while the adult’s equivalent contains 2 per cent less cotton and 5 per cent synthetics.
Lydia and her friend Catherine showed up to the pub in the same children’s dress
Twenty-seven-year-old Holly Gardner has amassed 129,000 followers on TikTok and 54,000 on Instagram sharing her best buys from the high street’s kids sections. Standing at 4ft 11 inches tall, she’s been ditching brands’ adult offerings in the pursuit of a better fit since she was around 17. “Initially, I would say it was due to length and price but as I got older I realised just the proportions of the clothes fit me better,” she says. “Especially when it comes to the hip sizes and crotch to belly button.
“A lot of petite ranges won’t actually cater for petite bodies,” Gardner adds. “They will literally get the same measurements as their average size and make the length shorter, which isn’t very flattering and it doesn’t really fit… I wasn’t too shocked by how popular the content became.”
Of the high street’s offerings, Gardner prefers Zara’s kids’ section overall, thanks to their on-trend designs, New Look’s kids’ section for the way their clothes fit, and H&M’s kids’ section for their trendier style of jeans, including a low mid-rise cut, which are otherwise hard to find.
“My best ever buy was probably a pair of cargo trousers from the New Look kids’ section,” she enthuses. Gardner had previously written off the style as all of the cargos from adult sections of stores were “baggy to the point of drowning”, particularly in the crotch area. “It was so unflattering,” she says. “But these New Look cargos fit perfectly – especially on my hips and they weren’t too high-waisted, so the crotch didn’t feel super low.”
The same but different: a ribbed black T-shirt in the M&S women’s section was twice the price of one for teenage girls
Whenever Gardner shares her finds to social media, there’s always a smattering of comments complaining about inclusivity. “What if you’re short and curvy?” one commenter asks. “My hips will never fit in child-sized,” adds another. “I am not skinny enough to do this,” says a third.
Obviously, we don’t want women aiming to fit in children’s clothes if that’s not their usual size. But you don’t have to be a size zero. In a recent video, Gardner, who’s a UK size 4-6, shops with a friend who’s 5ft 4ins tall and a UK size 10-12 with 30G boobs to see who the kids’ section could cater to; both fit in the
Another criticism is that, if designs suit adults, then perhaps they’re not appropriate for children. “I do totally agree with that,” says Gardner, who adds this can work both ways: “Some items will have little features that’ll signify that it’s meant for a younger audience,” she says. “They’ll add a heart patch or something to a T-shirt, whereas you wouldn’t get that in the adults’ section. Some of the clothes definitely feel a lot more playful.”
Of course, the answer here is for brands to carry sizes that legitimately reflect the population: the short, tall, skinny, fat, big- boobed, flat-chested, curvy-thighed, wide-shouldered, narrow- waisted – and everyone in between. But with fast fashion moving at the speed of light, careful tailoring comes at a cost, and is hard to come by on the high street. So, shoppers are taking matters into their own hands; purchasing from men’s sections, children’s sections and second-hand (Vinted is now the third-largest fashion retailer in the UK) to find the (affordable) perfect fit.
In the UK, brands independently decide what their clothes sizes look like, hence why you could be a size eight in one store and a large in another. If a brand is aiming to appeal to teenagers, for example, they’re more likely to model their clothes on somebody they deem to reflect that. As such, Gardner will also often shop in Zara’s youth-focused sister store Bershka, which will often have the same product, with better measurements for her body type. But, if her tastes mature, this option could be off the cards.
For now, she and the hundreds of thousands that follow her are grateful for the adaptability of the children’s department. “As an adult, it’s super hard to find clothes that will fit you,” Gardner concludes. “So, I think the petite girls feel seen... I just knew people would want to hear the news.”
The Magazine
Cambridge physiologist Dr Robert Edwards holds the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Joy Brown, who was born by caesarean section on this day in 1978 (Getty)
306: Constantine I was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.
1554: Mary I married Philip II of Spain.
1587: Christianity was banned in Japan.
1814: English engineer George Stephenson introduced his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway, named Blücher.
1848: Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl, prime minister from 1902- 05, was born in Scotland. He was foreign secretary from 1916-19, during which he made his famous Balfour Declaration, promising the Zionists a homeland in Palestine.
1894: Walter Brennan, US actor who played character parts in more than 100 films and the only winner of three Oscars for best supporting actor (Come and Get It, Kentucky and The Westerner), was born.
1907: Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s experimental camp, to test the feasibility of scouting, began on Brownsea Island, near Poole. Four days later, the Boy Scouts organisation was created.
1909: Louis Bleriot became the first man to fly across the Channel, flying his three-cylinder monoplane from near Calais to Northfall Meadow near Dover Castle.
1933: An American jazz orchestra led by Duke Ellington performed in the Netherlands’ first live radio concert, in Amsterdam.
1943: Benito Mussolini was dismissed as Italian prime minister and arrested on the authority of King Victor Emmanuel III.
1948: Bread rationing ended in Britain.
1959: The hovercraft, the SRN 1 as it was called, made its first English Channel crossing – from Dover to Calais – in a little over two hours.
1965: Former champion British boxer and nightclub owner Freddie Mills was found shot dead in his car in Soho.
1968: Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which rejected artificial forms of birth control.
1978: The first test-tube baby was born in Oldham General Hospital. The girl was named Louise Joy Brown.
1984: Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.
1989: Just 3.6 miles short of Dover, woman pilot Gloria Pullan had to ditch Louis Bleriot’s historic plane in the Channel while
1999: Lance Armstrong won the first of seven consecutive Tour de France titles but was later disqualified for doping.
2000: An Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel shortly after takeoff at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, killing all 109 passengers and crew aboard and four people on the ground.
PA
On this day last year: US president Donald Trump landed in Scotland for a four-day trip that saw him visit his golf courses in Aberdeen and Ayrshire.
Birthdays
Nicole Farhi, fashion designer, 80; Sheena McDonald, broadcaster, 72; Iman, model and wife of the late David Bowie, 71; Matt LeBlanc, actor, 59; Kevin Phillips, former footballer, 53; Hasan Piker, left-wing American political commentator, 35.
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Culture/The Saturday interview
surviving the human experience and
As she appears along with Jennifer Garner in ‘The Five Star Weekend’, Scary Movie stalwart Regina Hall speaks to Adam White about being funny, almost becoming a superstar, the grief that
led her to acting, and the tragic fate of her ‘One Battle After Another’ character
Hall started appearing in adverts to pay for her journalism studies after her father died suddenly (Getty)
n much of her work but in particular the Scary Movie franchise, Regina Hall is comfortably the funniest woman of 21st century cinema. In those horror spoofs, she specialises in immaculately smart-stupid, stupid-smart character work, clown by way of a mad scientist. To call her loud on-screen feels disrespectful. Outrageous, even more so. Think of her prime skillset as more like a kind of avant-garde insanity, built upon line readings (“Cindy, the TV’s leaking”; “Cindy, this is a skeleton! This is bones!”) that have been made immortal by memes, TikToks and YouTube compilations. I find Hall hilarious. Does she?
I
“Hmm!” she exclaims, down the phone from her current base in New Jersey, where she’s been filming. “I know that my friends are funny. I have a funny family for sure.”
I sense she’s thinking of it like mathematics. Funny person plus funny person equals… you’re probably funny, too? “But humour’s subjective, right?” she counters. “Humour’s a very tricky thing.”
Hall is more of a cerebral comic, then, who approaches jokes with the same thoughtfulness as she’d approach the shedding of a tear in a far heavier drama. She deciphers the nuts and bolts of a line, and the reasons behind them. Perhaps that’s why she’s so great across the board: she brought maternal yet increasingly bruised conviction to the role of a doomed freedom-fighter in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another last year, and has bracketed the frivolity of Scary Movie and the 2017 smash Girls Trip with turns in smart, downbeat indies like 2018’s Support the Girls, for which she became the first Black woman to win the Best Actress prize at the New York Film Critics Circle.
“I’ve had heartbreak and disappointments, and joy and peace and laughter,” she says. “My life has always informed my work rather than the other way around. So it’s kind of like I’m just over here surviving the human experience and trying to make my
We’re here today to talk about The Five Star Weekend, a frothy new limited series on Sky and Now about a group of disparate women linked by their individual friendships with Jennifer Garner’s Hollis. Several months after the death of her husband, Hollis gathers the women together for a weekend of fun and emotional catharsis. Chloë Sevigny’s Tatum is awaiting medical results. D’Arcy Carden’s Brooke has a dodgy husband. Gemma Chan’s mysterious Gigi has a devastating secret. Hall’s Dru-Ann is a sports agent in the middle of a PR nightmare – she publicly shamed her star client Posey after she announced a mental health break, and is weathering the consequences.
Hall alongside D’Arcy Carden, Gemma Chan, Chloë Sevigny and Jennifer Garner in ‘The Five Star Weekend’ (Peacock)
“I liked that she was outspoken in a very normally male- dominated world,” Hall says. “And that her mouth gets her into trouble. That’s always interesting to play.”
thinks, ‘You have an opportunity that I didn’t have, and I don’t want you to squander it.’ But she forgets that just because she’s older, it doesn’t mean she knows better.”
I tell Hall that Dru-Ann felt very real, in how we’re typically instructed to be forthright and confident, but not too much, lest we be judged. It’s like one long internal battle. But Hall seems a little unconvinced. “Maybe,” she says. “Everyone’s internal compass is different, isn’t it? For some people it may be a battle. For others it may just be.”
There’s a point early on in the show in which Dru-Ann writes a NotesApp apology for how she’s treated Posey, which she screenshots and publishes to her Instagram. It doesn’t go well. NotesApp apologies are practically a celebrity rite of passage at this point, I tell Hall. But she’s always been entirely scandal-free, I notice. There are no dubious quotes out there. No real public dating history, either. Has it been intentional to remain vaguely enigmatic as a movie star?
Paul Thomas Anderson and I always had that conversation about what happened to her. I think she’s dead. Paul thinks she’s in jail ... Neither trajectory is amazing
“I can honestly say I’ve never thought about it,” she says. “Maybe earlier in my career I would have been more free with any thoughts I felt compelled to express. But probably no one would have wanted to hear them anyway…”
What’s interesting about Hall, though, is that she originally studied to be a journalist, which may explain why she’s so good at giving away so little to people like me.
“I did learn what ‘off-the-record’ meant,” she laughs. “I mean, that’s probably helped.” It’s meant she’s always known to say “off-the-record!” in interviews before she starts saying anything
she “wouldn’t want the world to know”. “Because you can’t say it after, then it’s like… too late! And I know that all thanks to my time at NYU.”
Hall studied journalism with a plan to produce long-form news reports for television, only for her father to die suddenly from a stroke during her very first semester. A friend suggested she could make extra money by appearing in commercials, which landed her an agent. “It was never something planned, but many of our biggest pivots in life aren’t,” she says. “In the middle of all of this grief, I finished my journalism programme, then decided to really study acting. So it was like life happened, I started this and loved it, and now years later I’m on the phone to you.”
Hall alongside Shannon Elizabeth and Anna Faris in the original ‘Scary Movie’ (Shutterstock)
Work was more or less instant. She provided valuable support in Black Y2K touchstones like The Best Man (1999) and Love & Basketball (2000), then was cast in Scary Movie (2000). She reprised the role of the narcissistic, probably psychologically unwell Brenda Meeks in four of its five sequels (despite being killed in two of them), and most recently in June’s Scary Movie 6.
Despite their success, the movies had notoriously chaotic productions – Marlon and Shawn Wayans, who created the franchise with their father, the filmmaker Keenan Ivory Wayans, were fired after 2001’s Scary Movie 2 by producer Harvey Weinstein, and finally took back ownership of the series with 6.
“Scary Movie was only my third movie, so there were many things I didn’t know back then,” Hall says now. “At the time I didn’t have any access to the behind-the-scenes stuff they were dealing with. I’m just very happy that they were able to reclaim what was theirs.”
I’m curious how she’s dealt with some of the spicier gags in those movies, particularly when they involve celebrities that Hall ended up working with. Scary Movie saw her parody Jada Pinkett Smith’s vaguely overblown public murder in Scream 2, and she went on to work with Pinkett Smith in Girls Trip. A memorable gag in Scary Movie 2 in which Brenda compares a dusty skeleton to the famously trim Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart came just as Hall herself joined the actual cast of Ally McBeal for its final season. Did it ever get, well, awkward?
“They were both pretty wonderful, to be honest with you,” she says. “Calista was lovely. Jada’s a real class act. I hope that everyone knows that the intention is never to be malicious with that kind of joke. And also it’s Brenda, you know? Something’s wrong with Brenda.” She cackles. “Like I’m not the person making those comments, it’s this person with a very specific way of looking at the world. Her lens is only hers, which is what I love about her.”
She says her gradual shift to drama over the years was never intentional. “There’s just been a lot of luck, some divine timing, some God in there,” she says. “And I guess that idea of always wanting to do something different each time.” One Battle came to her directly through Paul Thomas Anderson, her next-door neighbour of years, who asked her one day if she’d play Deandra
for him – Hall has described her as the Obi-Wan Kenobi figure of the film, a careful observer within a group of far-left revolutionaries. I tell Hall that I saw Deandra as the film’s heart, and its biggest tragedy. She was probably the most serious and devoted of her regime, and paid the price for it. The last time we see her she is in tears, handcuffed by military troops.
“Paul and I always had that conversation about what happened to her,” she says. “I think she’s dead. Paul thinks she’s in jail. But I think they killed her because she wasn’t important to them anymore. She was the last one standing.”
Hall as a doomed revolutionary in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’ (Shutterstock)
That’s awfully bleak, I suggest.
“I mean, neither trajectory is amazing,” Hall laughs. She says she loved Deandra. “She had a quietness to her soul, but a strength. She was wonderful to play.”
It’s funny, I tell her, that so many outlets – from The Hollywood Reporter to Vulture – described One Battle After Another as a real career breakthrough for her. She’s had a few over the years. The
New York Times previously described the one-two punch of Girls Trip and Support the Girls as “something akin to breakout stardom” in 2019. And, years before that, she’d had the Scary Movies and a raft of hits.
“I just assume that different audiences discover me at different times,” she says. “Some careers start quick, but I’ve had a slow and steady run. I don’t even know if ‘slow’ is right, honestly. More just steady. I mean, I’ve definitely never been an overnight sensation.”
Does it ever bother her?
“No! I take it as a very wonderful compliment. Not being synonymous with a particular project is one of the great joys of my career.”
It’s exactly how she likes it, I suppose. Sometimes hilarious. Sometimes tragic. Always making lemonade.
‘The Five Star Weekend’ is available on Sky Atlantic and Now
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Culture/Theatre
The late playwright Sarah Kane’s shocking play ‘Cleansed’ is often regarded as one of the most ‘hardcore’ pieces of modern British theatre. Director Rebecca Frecknall and star Leo Bill speak to
Louis Chilton about the Almeida’s new revival, and what lies behind those sensational stories
‘It’s not the violence so much – it’s the intense state you’re in throughout,’ says Bill (Nadav Kander)
t’s nearly three decades since the British playwright Sarah Kane took her own life, at the age of just 28 – but directors are still in thrall to the five shocking plays she left behind. In her lifetime, she was a celebrated but deeply polarising figure in the world of theatre: her debut, Blasted (1995), and her third play, Cleansed (1998) were particularly incendiary, thanks in part to their violence and willingness to explore humanity’s deepest depravity – even as they exposed its most fundamental tenderness.
I
Now it’s 2026, and the world has (to some extent) caught up with Kane’s brilliance. The latest director to wrestle with her writing is Rebecca Frecknall, spearheading a new staging of Cleansed at north London’s Almeida Theatre. Frecknall is the outgoing associate director at the Almeida, and Cleansed is her last in a run of shows there that included A Streetcar Named Desire (with Paul Mescal), Romeo & Juliet, and The Duchess of Malfi. “It’s interesting,” she tells me, over Zoom. “Cleansed doesn’t have the performance history that a lot of other plays I’ve directed do, and there’s something freeing in that. People have this idea around it, that it’s a brutal play, with a lot of violence in it. There’s a harshness to it. And that’s valid, but it’s a play that’s very much about love, and exploring the limits, possibilities and transcendent capabilities of love and connection.”
She’s sitting next to the actor Leo Bill (Taboo; The White Queen). Bill, who previously acted in Frecknall’s Malfi in 2019, fronts the cast as Tinker – a sadistic puppetmaster at a hellish, lawless university campus. His subjects, or victims, include a gay couple whose love is tested with extreme violence, and a woman grieving the loss of her brother, with whom she had an incestuous relationship. “It’s hard work, unusual work,” remarks Bill, when I ask how rehearsals are going. The play, he says, felt “hardcore, in a very supreme way. In a way that I hadn't really experienced before – and in a very British way as well. In terms
“Hardcore” is surely a fair enough adjective. A trigger warning for the production suggests a sort of “I’ll have everything on the menu” approach to transgression – it warns that Cleansed includes “prolonged nudity, torture, mutilation, sexual violence and incest, suicide, and drug abuse” – and I’ve abridged that list by half. It’s par for the course, I suppose: this is after all a play that features rats eating limbs and tongues being severed.
Lizzy Connolly and Bill in ‘Cleansed’ (Marc Brenner)
It’s the fourth major production of Cleansed to be staged in London, and the first in a decade. During the previous outing, directed by Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre in 2016, the shock factor made its way into headlines: the BBC reported that five audience members fainted during previews of the show, with dozens walking out. Frecknall says that she would be “really surprised” if the phenomenon repeats itself here. “It’s certainly not the aim,” she says, “but I don’t think it was Katie’s aim when she did it at the National. People have physical reactions to all types of works; it’s just some get reported more than others.”
At the time, Mitchell claimed that her cast had suffered “strange” and “extreme” nightmares during the show’s run. “I thought I would [be the same],” admits Frecknall, “but I’ve actually slept better at night. Just because it’s so tiring – the level of concentration required, but also the creative energy, and the physical demands. You’re trying to stage the unstageable multiple times over.”
Bill credits the strong support system among his collaborators with helping to mitigate the gloom of the material. “We talked a lot about not taking it home with you,” he says. “It’s not the violence so much – it’s the intense state you’re in throughout. But at the weekend, I did have these waves of sadness that would just sort of hit me. So you try and do nice things… I went to the zoo.”
The beauty in ‘Cleansed’ is so much more important than whether somebody faints or not
Bill brings up a quote from Kane, from an interview with The Independent she did back in 1995. Asked how she’s able to “get up every morning” when her vision of the world is so bleak, she responded: “Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”
“There’s something in that,” says the actor. “We do live in a cruel world. And I sort of question how conservative we have become. We should be challenged. And theatre should challenge people. And theatres have been funded… it’s not like we’re illegally doing some heinous crimes down an alleyway and charging some cash.”
Leo Bill
He has, he says, had “quite a lot” of friends and acquaintances tell him that they want to come and see the play, but are “scared” about the play’s content. “It’s like, ‘Well, we could all go and watch a Noël Coward play’,” says Bill, “And that’s fine – but what world are we in, where we are afraid to be challenged? It all becomes about that, about, like, ‘oh, some hands get chopped off’. Whereas actually, it’s so beautiful. And the beauty in [Cleansed] is so much more important than whether somebody faints or not.”
There are other problems, too, with staging Cleansed. Kane’s work was known for probing the translation from page to stage, often leaving substantial room for directors to interpret her instructions idiosyncratically. (Her last two plays, for instance – 1998’s Crave and the posthumously staged 4:48 Psychosis – did not specify which lines of dialogue were to be spoken by whom.) In Cleansed, these challenges manifest most in the stage directions, which are often literal but supposedly “impossible” to stage. Like a where a sunflower grows up from the floor, or, um, the aforementioned rats. Every scene, says Frecknall, contains a “theatrical problem to solve”.
There are struggles with the content too – the lack of conventional narrative information provided to either the audience or those staging it. “It's unusual work to be in the room with a play that gives you so little information,” she says. “And it
Pearl Chanda and Bill in ‘Cleansed’ (Marc Brenner)
doesn’t have a naturalistic, linear structure. It’s challenging for everyone to work out how to play the scenes, when you don’t have the information about what happens directly before and after.”
“It's not a play where, you know, you start at the beginning and two people are having a chat over a coffee and then slowly everything goes to shit,” says Bill. ”It just starts at an extreme and carries on. There’s no respite – it’s relentless.”
After Cleansed, Frecknall is moving to the Old Vic (alongside the Almeida’s artistic director Rupert Goold) to serve as associate director there. She could hardly have picked a bolder swansong. All these years later, Kane’s play seems to be just as provocative, just as unusual – and just as challenging – as it was when it first debuted. “You don’t really see that type of work very often,” admits Bill. “Even sitting in the rehearsal room, you start reading the play, and there are things in it that I still don't get.
“But it’s not just intellectual. You don't have to completely get it. Cleansed does something to you on an emotional level – if you let it.”
Until 29 August
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Culture/Album review
On ‘Music, Fashion, Film’, Charli XCX celebrates her favourite artforms and awkwardly flirts with a new rock-inspired approach. It’s all a long way from the neon boldness of her previous record
Roisin O'Connor
What’s going on? The pop star sounds conflicted on her seventh LP (Tyrell Hampton)
Charli XCX is in a quandary. Or at least, that’s how it seems on her seventh album, Music, Fashion, Film. It’s been a strange, disjointed rollout for the pop star’s latest full-length release – her third in just over two years, if we’re including her Wuthering Heights soundtrack – not least because of the mixed messages about what the project is. The sound and themes, too, are confusing and often contradictory.
from the era-defining sensation that was 2024’s Brat – a work that sparked endless memes, merch, TikTok dances and smoking habits. After that, she was “not inspired to write anything new”. Then her longtime collaborator AG Cook suggested they record while in Paris for fashion week; the idea of working in such a contained, hectic environment appealed. Music, Fashion, Film evolved into a celebration of her three favourite mediums, hence the cover art featuring a trio of heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Marc Jacobs, John Cale. “This album is, in a way, all about how lucky I feel to be able to do what I do,” she told fans in New York City earlier this month.
The first interview Charli did for this record was a Vogue cover, moodily shot in black and white. The strapline: “Charli XCX… on her rock reinvention.” The accompanying article stated that “she really is making rock music”, with Charli remarking: “What’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.” Fans were understandably confused, then, when she unveiled the first single, “Rock Music”, very much not a rock song, instead a pop track buoyed by a bouncy distorted guitar riff and the tongue-in-cheek refrain: “I think the dancefloor is dead/ So now we’re making rooooooock music.”
Amid the heated conversation over the song, Charli posted a video of herself stating she “never said I was making a rock album”. So, things get even more perplexing while listening to the album in full (all 30 minutes of it; most songs clock in at the two-minute mark) because actually, quite a lot of it does seem rock-inspired. “Card Declined” is stomping, dark and sulky, Seattle grunge style, with Charli intoning a shopping list in a manner that seems to knowingly poke fun at her own capitalist inclinations. “I’m Afraid” is even bleaker, like Kurt Cobain’s “Something in the Way”, insomnia in song form, as she wrestles with different identities and the notion that pain leads to better art. The production throughout is excellent – it envelops you, full
She’s in fashion: Charli XCX in her music video for ‘SS26’ (Henry Redcliffe)
The music video for “Camera”, starring French actor Vincent Cassel, was influenced in part by a shot of an exhausted James Dean having his makeup touched up on the set of his final film, Giant – he died weeks after wrapping his scenes. The image connected with Charli, who thought about her own relationship with making art: “Even though it can feel hard and sometimes humiliating, there’s a burning passion to get to this place where you feel something powerful and indescribable,” Charli posted to Instagram. The thing is, when you see the finished film, Dean is in character. On Music, Fashion, Film, there are more than a few instances where you feel like you’re witnessing the creative process in action – you’re inside it, rather than enjoying the final, polished version.
In a Rolling Stone interview, Charli spoke of her belief that earnest and funny can exist in the same space. And truly, few do
this better than her – just listen to “Girl, So Confusing” and then “Von Dutch” on Brat – but I wonder if the lines have blurred beyond her control. It’s frustrating to have a good song like “Camera”, which reminds me of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs circa Fever to Tell (2003) and addresses her indecision over pursuing a film career in her early thirties, followed by something like “2007”, a reheated take of her nostalgia fest with Troye Sivan, “1999”. “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007,” she purrs coyly. We’re back to serious matters on closing track “No One Lasts Forever”, inspired by David Cronenberg’s account of a near-death experience and featuring a looping, spoken-word segment from the director himself.
Quite a lot of the songwriting feels like a hangover from Brat, often riffing along the lines of, “You doing this makes me feel like that, am I insecure, I hate this, I wanna do something, what does it all mean anyway?” It belies the confident album title and its lofty cover stars. Similarly, “SS26” is the prettiest song on the record but flails around with questions of futility in our messed- up world, and how the world of fashion seems vapid within that context; a strange message, on an album promising to celebrate the form. “Wink Wink” addresses her famous self-awareness but undermines it, too: “You don’t get me… I don’t know why you don’t believe me.”
So often, Music, Fashion, Film comes off like Charli is trying to work out where her place is in all of it. Is she trying to align herself with these auteurs, or confessing her insecurity that she might not belong there? Is she mocking the self-seriousness of herself and her peers or paying tribute to art’s transformative powers? She’d probably want you to believe all of the above. But the overarching sense on this album is of the kind of gin-infused, late-night philosophical ramblings sent drifting out of a Paris apartment window, along with grey wisps of cigarette smoke. At the time, you feel like you’re really on to something. But in the cold light of day, most of the ideas are rather half-baked.
Puzzles
Chris Maume presents his weekly general knowledge quiz
Q1. Who are the above, and what’s the link?
Q2. On this day in 1978, Louise Brown was born by planned Caesarean section in Oldham. What was notable about her birth?
Q3. Which US sports team’s name is derived from the fact that the team’s first ground was near an airport?
Q4. Who did Pietro Badoglio replace on this day in 1943?
Q5. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of more than 5,000 synthetic chemicals used to make items non-stick, water-repellent and grease-resistant, as well as in firefighting foam. How are they increasingly becoming known?
Q6. What unfortunate historical distinction was claimed by the US escort carrier USS St. Lo during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944?
Q7. What has recently linked the brands Stella Artois, Home Depot, Adidas, Lay’s, Walkers, Lenovo, McDonald’s, Ninja Kitchen, Pepsi, Verizon, Major League and Bank of America?
Q8. Debswana Diamond Company, established in 1969, is a joint venture between whom?
Q9. To the nearest hundred, how many Lord Mayors of London have there been?
Q10. Which broadcaster, who died this week, caused ructions in his 2008 book on political correctness, It’s a PC World, when he described the Queen Mother as “a ghastly old bigot”?
Q1. From top left, Heidi Alexander (transport secretary), Miatta Fahnbulleh (energy secretary), Anneliese Midgley (chief whip), Lucy Powell (education secretary), Ellie Reeves (attorney general) and Emma Reynolds (chief secretary to the Treasury) are all ministers in the new cabinet named by Andy Burnham this week.
Q2. She was the original “test tube baby”, the first baby born by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. She is now an IVF advocate.
Q3. The New York Jets, of the NFL. The airport was LaGuardia, three miles away from the team’s original ground, Shea Stadium; the name was also chosen because it rhymed with the baseball team New York Mets, who also played at Shea Stadium.
Q4. He became prime minister of Italy, replacing Benito Mussolini, who was persuaded to step down by King Victor Emmanuel III. Badoglio resigned in June 1944, and died in 1956.
Q5. “Forever chemicals”. They break down so slowly that they can be found in soil, air, water and animals, and carry serious health risks for humans.
Q6. It was the first ship to be sunk by kamikaze action: it sank in 30 minutes after being struck by a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero plane, resulting in the deaths of more than 140 of the 889-strong crew.
Q7. They are all brands endorsed by David Beckham during the World Cup. According to a report in The Sunday Times he is thought to have made about $25m during the tournament.
Q8. De Beers and Botswana. It operates all four mines in the country and accounts for nearly a quarter of annual global diamond production.
Q9. Dame Susan Langley, the incumbent for 2025-26, is the 697th Lord Mayor of London, the third woman to fill the job and the first to style herself “Lady Mayor”. The first Lord Mayor, Henry fitz Ailwin, served 24 terms, from 1189 to 1212.
Q10. Edward Stourton, formerly presenter on the Today programme. He made the remark after recounting a conversation with the Queen Mother in which she referred to European Union leaders as “all those Huns, wops and dagos”.
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Bangladesh
Cambodia
Canada
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Indonesia
Malaysia
Mexico
Pakistan
United Kingdom, Arthur James Balfour, As Andy Burnham
总体结论： ❌ 未通过 (Quality Audit Failed) 该翻译版本存在严重的幻觉 (Hallucination) 和 交付缺陷。译文在处理特定文本块时，将源文不存在的虚构内容（如 2026 年的日期、虚构的政治人物动态及大篇幅的政策讨论）编造进译文中，且包含了严重的内部清理标签。
译文在 Page 5 至 Page 12 以及 Page 79-81 出现了极大规模的“凭空造句”现象，这些内容在提供的 SOURCE PREVIEW 中完全不存在：
- 虚构日期/标题：译文 Page 5 出现了 # The Independent - 25.07.2026.pdf 中文镜像版，源文并无此日期。
- 虚构故事情节：译文 Page 5-12 详细描述了特朗普关税、英国商会 (BCC) 的反应、最高法院判决、强迫劳动禁令等大量政治分析。核对源文预览，Page 4 之后直接跳到了 Page 82，中间缺失的所有内容在译文中被非法“重建”或填充了非源文内容。
- 虚构人物动态：译文 Page 79-81 详细讨论了加拿大总理马克·卡尼及 WTO 替代方案，而源文预览在 Page 81 之后直接进入 Page 82 的新文章。
[!WARNING] 警告块，列出了大量未翻译的专有名词清单（如 "Across Europe, Adam White..."）。根据审计指令，任何翻译/内部清理标签均视为交付缺陷。chief whip 被译为 首席监票官（应为：首席党鞭）。Badoglio 在同一页中被译为 巴多利奥 和 巴多格廖（译名不统一）。1.5 million new homes 译为 1.5 百万套（虽正确但中式表达生硬，通常译为 150 万套）。Page 和 第 X 页 两种格式间随意切换（例如 Page 4 $\rightarrow$ 第 10 页 $\rightarrow$ Page 155）。| 缺陷类型 | 严重程度 | 实例/位置 | 说明 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 幻觉 (Hallucination) | 🛑 致命 | Page 5 - Page 12, Page 79-81 | 凭空编造了大量关于特朗普关税和贸易战的政治评论，源文不存在。 |
| 交付缺陷 (Label) | 🔴 高 | 译文开头 [!WARNING] 块 |
包含内部 QA 检查清单，未在交付前清理。 |
| 译名错误 (Wrong Term) | 🟡 中 | Page 155 chief whip $\rightarrow$ 首席监票官 |
专业术语翻译错误。 |
| 译名不一致 | 🟡 中 | Page 155 Badoglio |
同一页出现两种不同的译名。 |
| 格式问题 | 🔵 低 | 全文页码标签 | Page 与 第 X 页 混用。 |