Oscar-winning singer chooses book by Oliver Jeffers that highlights importance of protecting nature
Billie Eilish has become the latest star to read a CBeebies bedtime story, having chosen a book that teaches children about interacting with nature.
The Oscar-winning singer of What Was I Made For? and Birds of a Feather read This Moose Belongs to Me by the author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers.
Continue reading...Researchers say standups’ contribution is unsung, and hope findings will help to bolster the industry’s credibility
The live comedy industry in the UK contributes more than £1bn to the economy every year, according to a study by Brunel University London.
In the first project of its kind, researchers calculated the industry’s annual value at £1bn, based on an estimated 3,000 workers in the sector, surveying more than 350 comedians, promoters, producers, venue managers and agents.
Continue reading...Ruth Westheimer encouraged frank dialogue when it came to sex, a subject, she said, ‘we must talk about’
The legendarily frank sex therapist and cultural icon Dr Ruth Westheimer, known simply as Dr Ruth, has died at the age of 96, according to her publicist.
Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family.
Continue reading...New Mexico judge agrees charges should be dropped after lawyers said state ‘buried’ evidence about live ammunition
Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial came to a dramatic end on Friday, after a New Mexico judge dismissed the case against the actor and found that the state had improperly withheld evidence related to how live rounds of ammunition ended up on the film set where the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot.
Just days after courtroom proceedings had begun, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ruled in favor of the defense and agreed that the charges against Baldwin should be dropped, finding that the state had concealed evidence that would have been favorable to the actor. The dismissal, made with prejudice, puts an end to the involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin.
Continue reading...City authorities say blaze in spire contained after plume of smoke seen rising from 12th-century gothic building
Firefighters in the Normandy city of Rouen have managed to bring a fire in its world-famous gothic cathedral under control, calming fears of another disaster at one of France’s architectural jewels five years after the devastation of Notre Dame.
Initial television images showed a dark plume of smoke rising from the cathedral spire and people in the streets below looking up in horror.
Continue reading...Josh Klinghoffer, who is touring with Pearl Jam, is being sued after allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian in a crash in Alhambra earlier this year
Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer is being sued for wrongful death and negligence after allegedly hitting and killing a pedestrian earlier this year.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Ashley Sanchez, the daughter of 47-year-old Israel Sanchez, who died after being hit while walking in a crosswalk in Alhambra, east of Los Angeles.
The collision happened the afternoon of 18 March, when plaintiffs allege Klinghoffer was driving a black SUV with no licence plates and turned left at an intersection with a marked crosswalk.
Video from the plaintiffs shows a black car hitting a man, who was Israel Sanchez, during the turn before pulling over. The footage was obtained from a neighbor’s Ring camera.
Israel Sanchez suffered blunt force trauma to the head and died from his injuries a few hours later at the hospital, the lawsuit said. No arrest was made in the incident.
The lawsuit also alleges Klinghoffer was using a cellphone while driving, as video footage shows the driver holding an object above the steering wheel. Video also shows a 40-foot-wide grassy median dividing the road that should have given Klinghoffer time to see pedestrians in the crosswalk, the lawsuit said.
“My dad was known for being a great chef, the most talented of his family, the greatest grandpa always full of love and joy,” Ashley Sanchez said in a news release. “His smile was so infectious. His life was taken by a careless act of a person who didn’t bother to look where he was driving.”
Nandy says her department will prioritise celebrating British culture and a less divisive vision of the UK
The “era of culture wars is over”, Lisa Nandy has promised in her first speech as culture secretary, saying her department will be at the heart of efforts to reflect a more positive and less divisive vision of the UK.
“For too long, for too many people, the story we tell ourselves, about ourselves as a nation, has not reflected them, their communities or their lives,” Nandy told staff at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Continue reading...Museum has been plagued by numerous delays and has seen off almost 40 Italian governments
More than half a century and 39 Italian governments after it was first envisioned, a new museum will open later this year to house modern art from Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera gallery.
The Brera Modern, just a few doors from the main gallery, has been plagued by numerous delays, most recently the discovery of asbestos and problems with the conditioning system.
Continue reading...Popular Dig Where You Stand project using Sheffield City Archives is bringing past to life in exhibitions around city
The word “archive” may usually conjure images of dusty boxes, white gloves and hushed silences. But a growing number of artists are finding that underneath the layers of protective paper there’s rich source material.
“Archives are like time travel,” says Désirée Reynolds, an artist in residence at Sheffield City Archives, who has been burrowing into the thousands of items in the northern city’s annals in search of black history since 2021.
Continue reading...Online protest claimed the work mocked the Christian religion and Liverpool mayor Ned Mannoun called for it to be taken down
A Sydney council has removed a “playful” artwork of Jesus Christ overlaid with Looney Tunes characters after a torrent of online abuse.
Sydney artist Philjames’ work, Jesus Speaks to the Daughters of Jerusalem, was removed from the Blake Art Prize exhibition at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre after fierce criticism was directed at the artist and gallery on Friday, just two days before the eight-week exhibition ended.
Continue reading...Andrea Robin Skinner says her stepfather sexually assaulted her when she was nine, but her mother said she ‘loved him too much’ to leave him
The daughter of Nobel prize winner Alice Munro, Andrea Robin Skinner, has alleged that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child, and that her mother stayed with him even after he admitted to the abuse.
Skinner revealed the allegations in an essay and a news article in Canada’s Toronto Star on the weekend, writing about how her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, began sexually assaulting her in 1976 when she was nine years old and he was in his 50s.
Continue reading...Artistic director of Birmingham production of The Flying Dutchman says he hopes to inspire people to get involved
“Opera in this country is definitely not accessible,” says Byron Jackson, an international baritone and the artistic director of what is thought to be the first black- and Asian-led production of Wagner in the UK.
Opening in Birmingham on Sunday, this rendition of the German-language opera The Flying Dutchman will feature a cast from across the Commonwealth, and a number of community performers from Handsworth, Balsall Heath and farther afield in the West Midlands.
Continue reading...The writer Constantine Cavafy was largely unpublished in his lifetime, but was revered by artists. His archive and Alexandrian home are now on show for the first time
It was the backdrop to a literary world of the lost Levant. Away from the sea, on a narrow street in the old Greek quarter of Alexandria, 10 Rue Lepsius was the home and creative sanctuary of Constantine Cavafy.
For 26 years, it was here that the poet, a bureaucrat in British-run colonial Egypt, held court, treating writers such as EM Forster to long candle-lit nights of talk over liquors and what the English novelist later recalled as “small bits of bread and cheese”.
Continue reading...Front Électronique acts as ‘world of the night’ to combat rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally
More than 1,200 artists, DJs and promoters from the French music industry have come together in a bid to galvanise “the world of the night” into political action and to protest at the possibility of the first far-right French government since the second world war.
Members of the Front Électronique (FE) have organised live debates on video streaming service Twitch and free concerts, and released a fund-raising album Siamo Tutti Antifascisti Vol.1 (We are all Anti-Fascists) featuring 38 artists. The compilation is described as a “call to arms”.
Continue reading...Titanic became first film to gross $1bn globally, and Landau topped that with Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water
Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning Titanic and Avatar producer who helped bring director James Cameron’s visions to life, has died at 63.
Alan Bergman, co-chair of Disney Entertainment, announced Landau’s death in a statement on Saturday. No cause of death was given.
Continue reading...Ad-funded streamer wades into market with offering it says will appeal to those underserved by rivals
The Wes Anderson classic Moonrise Kingdom, the Channel 4 sitcom Fresh Meat, a reality TV series about adult content creators, some Bollywood hits and a handful of shark flicks: Tubi’s home screen is not short of viewing options, just like the British video-streaming market it waded into this week.
Tubi is taking on the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX and the BBC’s iPlayer with a free, ad-funded service offering 20,000 films and TV episodes, and an ambition of repeating its success in the US, where it has amassed nearly 80 million monthly users. But will it have a similar impact in the UK, where rival platforms are already well established?
Continue reading...Warriors from Britain joined far-flung Byzantine military campaigns in sixth century, grave goods suggest
Sixth-century Anglo-Saxon people may have travelled from Britain to the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria to fight in wars, researchers have suggested, casting fresh light on their princely burials.
St John Simpson, a senior British Museum curator, and Helen Gittos, an Oxford scholar, have concluded that some of the exotic items excavated at Sutton Hoo, Taplow and Prittlewell, among other sites, originated in the eastern Mediterranean and north Syria and cannot have been conventional trade goods, as others have suggested.
Continue reading...Angélica Liddell, who describes herself as an ‘irresponsible artist’, read out a bad review by Stéphane Capron and called him a ‘bastard’
A Spanish theatre-maker is being sued for defamation by a French theatre critic after she read out one of his reviews on stage, flashed her bare bottom at the audience and called him a “bastard”.
In a stunt that has sparked a debate about the limits of artistic freedom in politically divisive times, Angélica Liddell, a director and performer, read out a list of negative reviews of her past work from French critics, many of whom were in attendance at her opening show of the Avignon performing arts festival on Saturday.
Continue reading...Children’s experiences form basis of play that weaves 150 years of care system history into narrative
When theatre-makers Matt Woodhead and Helen Monks gathered with a small group of children in a theatre in Essex five years ago, the plan was simple: discuss the care system.
Woodhead and Monks are co-directors of Lung Theatre, a company that has made a name for itself by tackling weighty subjects, such as the Chilcot inquiry, housing evictions and, most recently, the spate of self-inflicted deaths at Woodhill HMP, that are often investigative verbatim pieces.
The Children’s Inquiry runs 8 July to 3 August at the Southwark Playhouse
Continue reading...National Trust ground-scanning technology maps new features close to site of Roman city of Wroxeter
An archaeological survey of more than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) in Shropshire has identified a wealth of previously unknown features, including two grand Roman villas and multiple earlier iron age farmsteads.
The geophysical survey, the largest ever conducted by the National Trust, used ground-scanning technology to map undetected features close to the site of the Roman city of Wroxeter, just south of modern day Shrewsbury.
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