Author: The Guardian

Just like Natalie Elphicke, the Thursday quiz thought about chucking in all its principles and everything it stood for by defecting to a Wednesday or a Friday, but it turns out there was very little publicity in that, so it couldn’t be bothered. Fourteen questions this week on topical news, general knowledge, and things found down the back of the sofa. It is just for fun, but let us know how you get on in the comments.The Thursday quiz, No 159If you really do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers – and…

Rereleased for its 30th anniversary, the macabre black-comic crime caper is from screenwriter John Hodge with Danny Boyle making his feature-directing debut, giving us a hint of the turbocharged showmanship that always marked his style and which he was to crank up another notch a few years later with the zeitgeisty 90s hit Trainspotting. Shallow Grave is a bizarre Edinburgh noir, centring on cover-ups, disloyalty and incompetent corpse-management in the approximate spirit of Ealing, with touches of Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry and Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane. It’s also a kind of 90s young person flatshare entertainment, but closer to…

A British toddler has had her hearing restored after becoming the first person in the world to take part in a pioneering gene therapy trial, in a development that doctors say marks a new era in treating deafness.Opal Sandy was born unable to hear anything due to auditory neuropathy, a condition that disrupts nerve impulses travelling from the inner ear to the brain and can be caused by a faulty gene.But after receiving an infusion containing a working copy of the gene during groundbreaking surgery that took just 16 minutes, the 18-month-old can hear almost perfectly and enjoys playing with…

Perhaps more than ever we are bombarded with images of other people’s bodies, and it is only human to compare ourselves with these unrealistic ideals. How can you learn to love your body for what it is? Therapists share their advice on improving body confidence.1. Recognise that accepting your body matters“Your body is the longest friendship that you will ever have and it is important to take care of that relationship,” says Tasha Bailey, a therapist based in south-east London and author of the book Real Talk. Body confidence is a common cause of concern for her clients, “especially among women…

The EU has reached a deal to arm Ukraine using seized profits from Russia’s frozen assets. EU senior diplomats meeting on Wednesday agreed on using the €4.4bn windfall profits, smoothing over a dispute about taxation and management costs in Belgium where most of the frozen assets are held. A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire and damaged an oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, the area’s crisis administration said on Thursday. Several oil tanks were damaged at the refinery near the village of Yurovka, the administration said. Officials from Belgorod, close to the border inside Russia, said there were eight…

Deputies responding to a disturbance call at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong unit and fatally shot a Black US air force airman who was home alone when they saw he was armed with a gun, an attorney for the man’s family said Wednesday.Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who was based at the special operations wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment in Fort Walton Beach when the shooting happened on Friday.Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson was on a Facetime call with a woman at the time of the encounter.According…

Joe Biden has issued a blunt warning to Israel that his administration will stop supplying bombs and artillery shells if its military pushes ahead with an offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in what could mark the start of a turning point in relations between the two countries.The US president delivered the warning in a television interview in which he brushed aside Israeli and Republican complaints and made clear his administration would not provide the weapons for an offensive on Rafah, which the US, the UN and other aid agencies warn would trigger a humanitarian disaster.“I made it…

The House easily quashed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Greene took to the House floor on Wednesday evening to announce her plans, prompting boos from fellow Republicans present in the chamber. Her request triggered a countdown clock, as House rules stipulated that members had to vote on the matter within…

Just ridiculous. Just Real Madrid. The team that appears to own this competition, that has some mystical hold over the trophy they refuse to let go of, are in the final again because, well, of course they are.Late on another wild, magical night here, the Santiago Bernabéu launched into a familiar chant. “That’s how Madrid win,” it goes. Again and again and again, each time more epic, more absurd than the last, this team a force that can’t be contained. The closer you think you are, the further away it is, as Bayern Munich found like so many others before…

Three men have been arrested and charged with sexually preying on children via Meta’s social networks in New Mexico, the state’s attorney general announced Wednesday.The arrests stemmed from an investigation into the potential harm to children caused by Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, codenamed “Operation MetaPhile”. Undercover agents posed as children, whom the three men solicited for sex, according to the criminal complaint. The sting operation is part of an ongoing lawsuit launched by Raúl Torrez’s office in December that alleges Meta has allowed its social media platforms to become marketplaces for child predators.“This operation was focused on one specific point,…