Category Archives: Culture

Kanye West barred from Grammys over ‘concerning online behavior’

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Representative confirms rapper will not perform at awards show after he was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours

Kanye West has been barred from performing at the Grammy awards next month due to “concerning online behavior”, a representative for the rapper and designer said.

The decision, confirmed to Variety, came a day after West, now legally known as Ye, was suspended from Instagram for 24 hours. The platform said content on the 44-year-old’s account was in violation of its policies on “hate speech and bullying and harassment”.

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Booker winner Ben Okri rewrites published novel to drive home message on slavery

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The author tells why he spent five years on a new draft of his 2008 novel Starbook to give more emphasis to one of its key themes

Self-criticism, perhaps even regret, is common among writers looking back at old work, but the novelist Ben Okri has now gone so far as to rewrite a whole published novel. And it is a book he already liked quite a lot.

The Booker-prize-winning Nigerian author has spent much of the last five years re-crafting his 2008 story Starbook, a mystical romance set in his homeland. A new version, complete with a new title and cover, is to be published this summer as The Last Gift of the Master Artists, and Okri believes that he has given more emphasis to transatlantic slavery, and will now offer his readers a “more considered” narrative.

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Miami rapper Baby Cino shot dead after leaving prison

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Unidentified gunman kills 20-year-old vocalist minutes after he was released on bond following arrest in Opa-locka, Florida

Tributes have been paid to Baby Cino, an aspiring rapper from Miami, who was shot and killed in a daylight ambush minutes after leaving a city jail on Wednesday.

The 20-year-old vocalist, whose real name was Timothy Starks, was arrested by Miami-Dade officers at 2am in Opa-locka, Florida on Tuesday after they pulled him over for driving with an obscured number plate. On searching his car, police found a fully loaded Glock 32 pistol.

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Stacey Abrams made president of Earth in Star Trek cameo

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Candidate for governor in Georgia and self-confessed superfan makes appearance in season four finale of Star Trek: Discovery

The Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams has been made president – of United Earth.

The honour was bestowed by the Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Discovery, in its season four finale.

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Somerset House donor married to oligarch quits board

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Exclusive: Maria Adonyeva, who gave arts centre at least £380,000, also steps down as Tate patron

The wife of a Russian businessman who at one stage pleaded guilty to defrauding the Kazakh government out of $4m (£3m) has stepped down as a patron of the Tate and from a prestigious advisory board at Somerset House, where she was a major donor.

Maria Adonyeva, who has a London-based charitable foundation and has been pictured as recently as 2018 on her husband’s yacht with close friends, including the actor Melanie Griffith, has given at least £380,000 in the past two years to Somerset House, where she sat on the arts centre’s development advisory board.

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UK city of culture 2025: Southampton and Bradford among those on shortlist

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Contenders hope to use the status as a springboard for social and economic recovery

Bradford, County Durham, Southampton and Wrexham county borough have been shortlisted to become the UK next city of culture, it has been announced.

The finalists were whittled down from a record 20 bids to eight longlisted regions, which also included Cornwall, Derby, Stirling, and the district of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon.

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Sumaya Sadurni: photojournalist and ‘rock’n’roll Mother Teresa’ dies at 32

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Described as ‘outstanding and fearless’ by Bobi Wine, tributes have been paid to Sadurni, whose work featured in the Guardian and New York Times

Sumaya Sadurni Carrasco has died while travelling to take photographs for the Guardian’s Saturday magazine in northern Uganda. Thomas Mugisha, an NGO worker, also died in the accident on 7 March.

Sumy, as she was known, was a talented, driven and courageous photojournalist with a rare gift for friendship. At just 32 years old, she had built a powerful body of work, which had been published in some of the world’s best-known publications; in 2020 she was shortlisted for the Guardian’s agency photographer of the year. She also leaves a legacy of knowledge and inspiration that she passed on to young photographers as a Uganda Press Photo award mentor, a teacher at Makerere University and a Canon trainer.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger appeals to Russian people to reject Kremlin misinformation

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Former California governor, 74, calls on Putin to stop attack on Ukraine and says ‘this is not the Russian people’s war’

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday told the Russian people that they are being fed misinformation about their country’s assault on Ukraine and appealed to President Vladimir Putin to stop the attack.

The Hollywood star said in the nine-minute video on Twitter that the Kremlin was intentionally lying to Russians by saying the invasion was intended to “denazify” Ukraine. Russia describes its actions as a “special operation”.

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Marvel denounces ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill after Disney apology

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Following Disney’s apology for silence over Florida law, studio pledges ‘strong commitment as allies who promote the values of of equality, acceptance and respect’

Marvel Studios says it “strongly denounces” any legislation that affects the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, following the passing of a controversial bill in Florida.

Republicans in Florida recently passed what opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill which limits teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity to young children in the state.

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Ed Sheeran copyright trial: songwriter made ‘concerted plan’

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Former management for Sami Chokri allegedly made ‘huge effort’ to bring song Oh Why to singer’s notice, court hears

Ed Sheeran was targeted with a “concerted plan” to secure his interest in a songwriter who later accused him of copying one of his songs, the high court has been told.

The former management company for Sami Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, allegedly made a “huge effort” to bring the 2015 song Oh Why to Sheeran’s notice, the copyright trial heard on Tuesday.

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Yorkshire’s lost ‘Atlantis’ nearly found, says Hull professor

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Is it hoped discovery of medieval trading town Ravenser Odd can teach people about perils of climate crisis

Hopes are high that a fabled medieval town known as “Yorkshire’s Atlantis” is about to be located and will begin giving up secrets held for more than 650 years.

Ravenser Odd was a prosperous port town built on sandbanks at the mouth of the Humber estuary before it was abandoned and later destroyed and submerged by a calamitous storm in 1362.

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‘Nothing was stolen’: New Zealanders carry on borrowing from closed, unstaffed library

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Door security error meant one of country’s largest city libraries was left open for hours, allowing hundreds to browse shelves

As New Zealand celebrated a national holiday, one of the country’s largest city libraries was closed, with staff and security given the day off. But an error with the automated door programming meant Tūranga’s doors opened to the public as usual – and the unstaffed and unsecured library was happily used by the public, who browsed and checked out books for hours before someone realised the mistake.

As well as its books, the library is home to a wide variety of artworks and sculpture – but staff say nothing was stolen, and there were no serious incidents to report.

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Timmy Thomas, R&B singer of Why Can’t We Live Together, dies aged 77

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Singer’s anti-war song reached US Top 3 in 1973 before being widely covered and sampled by artists including Drake

Timmy Thomas, whose spellbinding anti-war song Why Can’t We Live Together was a global hit in 1973, has died aged 77.

No cause of death has been given. His family wrote on his Facebook page: “With appreciation and gratitude, the family extends a thank you for the prayers, support, precious words and other expressions of love and kindness during this time.”

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Guardian documentary The Black Cop wins Bafta for best short film

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Cherish Oteka’s film is about a former police officer who discusses his memories of homophobia and racial profiling in the Met

The Guardian documentary The Black Cop has won the Bafta for best short film.

Directed by Cherish Oteka and produced by Emma Cooper, The Black Cop is about Gamal “G” Turawa, a former Metropolitan police officer who explores his memories of homophobia, racial profiling and racial harassment in his early career.

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‘Music is so different now’: Copyright laws need to change, says legal expert

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Industry figures warn that songwriters face future drawn out legal battles because the way in which people consume music has changed

Songwriters such as Ed Sheeran face a future of drawn out legal battles because the way in which people consume music has changed so much in the past half a century, a leading legal expert has warned, as she urged courts to reconsider how they interpret copyright law.

The rise of streaming on platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, combined with larger teams of writers behind hit songs, have led to a surge in high-profile copyright infringement cases in the past few years. Most recently, Sheeran is locked in an ongoing legal battle over Shape of You, Spotify’s most streamed song ever.

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How Dickens’ Pickwick comic serial brought his fans together

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Museum exhibit reveals the huge effect the The Pickwick Papers had on readers

Charles Dickens’s comic novel The Pickwick Papers, often overlooked today as a lighthearted period piece, was once a matter of very serious concern to thousands of fans across the world, some of whom adopted the personas of their favourite characters and founded appreciation societies.

Now the earliest proof that Mr Pickwick became central to the lives of many fans is to go on display at the Charles Dickens Museum in the novelist’s former London home in April. The Minute Book contains the official club notes of the first known Pickwick club and gives a clear picture of the way the book brought friends together to discuss the plots and debate social issues of the day.

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Charity that supported St Petersburg ballet and opera closes its doors

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Prince Charles was a patron of trust set up by friend of Putin to back the Russian Mariinsky theatre

A UK charity set up to support one of Russia’s oldest theatres has closed. The Anglo-Russian Opera and Ballet Trust, founded in 1992, raised millions for Russian arts organisations and boasted the Prince of Wales as its patron.

The charity was set up by conductor Valery Gergiev, a high-profile friend of Vladimir Putin, with the main goal of supporting St Petersburg’s Mariinsky theatre – one of the best-known cultural institutions in Russia – and promoting its work in the UK.

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Two employees of New York’s MoMA stabbed after man denied entrance

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New York police said the man’s membership had been revoked for previous incidents of disorderly conduct

A man stabbed two people inside the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Saturday afternoon after he was denied entrance for previous incidents of disorderly conduct, authorities said.

Police said the two people who were stabbed were museum employees. Both were in stable condition at Bellevue hospital.

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Museum visits do not improve GCSE results, study reveals

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Report finds no correlation between better exam grades and exposure to ‘middle-class’ outings

A family trip to the theatre or an afternoon at a museum may be a fun day out, but new research suggests that such cultural outings will not actually help children secure higher grades.

There have been persistent theories that wealthier children may be given an advantage in their school careers by being pressed into visits to art galleries and exhibitions. According to a new academic study, however, outings often regarded as “middle class” had no correlation with improved GCSE results.

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