The Paolo Di Paolo: Lost World exhibition presents more than 250 largely unseen images from the photographer’s archive. Di Paolo chronicled life in his country as an economic boom followed the destruction of the second world war. Although those were the years of la dolce vita he was an anti-paparazzo – he shunned the salacious and respected his subjects. The exhibition is at MAXXI in Rome until 30 June
Continue reading...Category Archives: Life and style
Trieste half-marathon backtracks on exclusion of Africans
Organisers invited only Europeans to draw attention to exploitation of African athletes
The organisers of a half-marathon in the northern Italian city of Trieste have backtracked on their decision to exclude African athletes from the race following accusations of racism.
“After launching a provocation that hit a nerve, drawing great attention to a fundamental issue, contrary to what was communicated yesterday, we will also invite African athletes,” Fabio Carini, the manager of the Trieste running festival, said in a statement.
Continue reading...Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands
For a century, the humble paper towel has dominated public toilets. But a new generation of hand dryers has sparked a war for loo supremacy.
By Samanth Subramanian
In the summer of 2005, a Chicago marketing consultant named George Campbell received a tantalising call from a headhunter. Was he open to an interview at Dyson? The company was secretively preparing to launch a new appliance, and it needed a sales strategy for the US: that was all the headhunter would divulge. Campbell was excited; he saw Dyson as “a company with the iconic quality of Apple, and an ability to take a basic product like a vacuum cleaner and make an 80% margin on it”.
He went along to Dyson’s office, a factory-like space with lofty ceilings and timber beams next to the Chicago river. In his first few conversations, he recalled, they wouldn’t even reveal what the product was. Finally, Campbell was told in strict confidence: it was a hand dryer. And he’d thought he was joining Dyson for the glamour. “My heart dropped to my stomach.”
Continue reading...Exercise helped with my anxiety – but I became obsessed. Therapy was the answer
It wasn’t until I had a back injury that I realised how extreme my gym habit had become – and admitted that I needed help
The first time I went for a run as an adult, I was at university and had been deeply depressed for several months. I managed a minute before I had to walk, but, I told myself, a minute was a start. I went every day and, as the weeks passed, I ran further, for longer. The impact was immediate – even after that first jog I felt a rush of achievement, of hope. And it was cumulative: every run that followed made me feel stronger, physically and emotionally. Then, one day, many months later, I realised I was not depressed any more.
As the years passed, I gradually branched out from short jogs into runs of more than two hours. I went to circuit classes and step classes, interval training and personal training, core sessions and legs, bums and tums sessions. I dropped two dress sizes and developed stomach muscles.
Continue reading...UK temperature hits 70-year high for Easter bank holiday
25.5C recorded, with 27C expected on Monday, which would make UK warmer than Morocco
Britons experienced the hottest day of the year so far on Saturday, and the hottest Easter bank holiday weekend for 70 years, as the temperature hit 25.5C (77.9F) in Gosport in Hampshire.
The temperature is expected to rise even further on Monday to 27C, making the sunniest spots in the UK warmer than most of Europe, Algeria and Morocco.
Continue reading...The dad who gave birth: ‘Being pregnant doesn’t change me being a trans man’
Transitioning meant that Freddy McConnell finally felt comfortable in his skin. Then he began a quest to conceive and carry his own child
Freddy McConnell takes out his phone and shows me a film of his baby snoring contentedly. Jack is gorgeous, with blond hair, blue eyes and heavy eyelids, and McConnell is the classic doting dad – albeit more hands-on than most. It’s a year since he gave birth to Jack, an experience he describes as life-changing. He has also made an intimate and moving film about that experience, from the decision to have a baby, through pregnancy and the delivery. Everything is documented in close-up, including Jack’s arrival in a hospital birthing pool.
You might expect McConnell to be an extrovert; an exhibitionist, even. In fact, the Guardian multimedia journalist is reserved and private in a rather old-fashioned, stiff-upper-lip English way. So why on earth would he want to expose himself like this?
Continue reading...Bedroom confidential: what sex therapists hear from the couch
Sex counsellors have a unique insight into our shared concerns and insecurities. Where once they focused on physical issues, now they are tackling psychological ones
Denise Knowles, a sex and relationship therapist with the charity Relate, says patients often say to her: “There are so many options, I don’t know where to start.” Thirty years ago, Knowles was mostly approached with physical problems: erectile dysfunction, painful intercourse, issues with ejaculation. Now she describes the scope of her work as “bio-psycho-social”. That is to say, everything has got a lot more complicated.
“I think it has gone from being very much: ‘This is the problem; this is how we resolve it,’ to: ‘How do we approach sex? What does it mean to you? How does it fit into the relationship, and how have you got to this place?’” She laughs. “Then we can start to deal with it.”
Continue reading...Historic lost garden in Kent to be opened to the public
Walmer Castle’s overgrown glen, dating from the 19th century, has been revived
An abandoned chalk pit, which has been an impenetrably dense jungle of bramble, gorse and fallen trees for more than a century will this month be revealed as an extraordinary lost garden created by two former prime ministers.
The lost garden of Walmer Castle in Kent was laid out in the early 19th century by William Pitt the Younger and completed by Lord Liverpool.
Continue reading...‘It’s not just a wolf whistle’: how catcalls became anti-harassment street art
With teenage girls a particular target of street harassment, Farah Benis is on a mission to document incidents and raise awareness
CatcallsofLdn is an Instagram account that raises awareness about street harassment using chalk art. Inspired by and working with @catcallsofnyc, founder Farah Benis collects submissions from the public then chalks them onto the pavement in the place where they happened. The hope is that chalking, documenting and sharing images of the words will help to raise awareness of street harassment and ultimately prevent it.
72% of submissions are from under 17-year-olds, 60% of those were wearing school uniforms and 100% of the perpetrators were adult men
Continue reading...Murder on the allotment: ‘She was everything that he wanted to be’
She was the respected allotment committee secretary, he was an ambitious fellow plot holder: why did he kill her?
In a corner of London, close to the busy Edgware Road, there is a secret garden. Tucked away on a residential street, the gate has the words “Colindale Gardens and Allotments Association” messily painted on a white plank tied to the chain-link fencing. Beyond the gate is a broad expanse of grass and earth, of greenhouses, sheds, canes and polytunnels. You can hear the occasional rumble of a train, and in the distance you can see cranes constructing blocks of flats to house the next generation of gardenless Londoners. But the space here is so peaceful, so lush and full of birdsong, that you almost forget where you are.
The Colindale allotments are home to 90 long plots, mostly 20 metres by eight, arranged along two parallel grass avenues. The rules say sheds can be put up only on the end farthest from the path, giving the space the look of a miniature suburban neighbourhood, with plots in front of sheds instead of lawns in front of houses. A plot costs £85 a year. There are currently 60 people on the waiting list.
Continue reading...The Bedouin women breaking new ground – in pictures
Four Bedouin women are leading tours in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, breaking new ground in a deeply conservative community where women almost never work outside the home or interact with outsiders.
Continue reading...From the joke shop to the high street: why poo is no longer taboo
It’s celebrated in emojis, party bags and board games, piled on cup cakes and meringues – and there’s even a museum dedicated to it. How did we get here?
‘I was a little hesitant about setting up the National Poo Museum,” begins Daniel Roberts, co-creator of the Isle of Wight’s most intriguing new tourist destination. “I thought, am I going to be socially contaminated? Are people going to point at me? Am I going to become Mr Poo?”
He needn’t have worried. The museum’s exhibits – encased in balls of resin, like something from a slightly troubling reimagining of Jurassic Park – were a hit. During the year in which the attraction was housed at the Isle of Wight Zoo, the zoo reported its busiest-ever summer. “People just loved it,” Roberts says. “We were nobodies, but because we mentioned poo, the whole world came running.” The museum’s arrival couldn’t have been better timed because, as Roberts puts it: “In the two years since we launched, we’ve seen an explosion in poo.”
Continue reading...Penny Mordaunt says UK will defend abortion rights amid global pushback
Development secretary vows government will ‘hold a strong line’, after attempts by Trump administration to weaken commitments
Britain’s international development secretary has promised to stand firm in her support for abortion rights in the face of growing opposition.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Canadian embassy on Monday, Penny Mordaunt said: “Leadership means not shying away from issues like safe abortion when the evidence shows us these services will save women’s lives.”
Continue reading...‘People don’t even look at me:’ eight black women discuss politics of light and dark skin – video
As part of our Shades of Black series, we invited eight women to talk about their experience of colorism in their relationships, careers and everyday life
- Have you experienced colorism? Share your story here
Why dark-skinned black girls like me aren’t getting married
Black women in the US marry less than others - and the numbers are even lower for darker skinned black women. Is colorism – favoring lighter skin – to blame? Dream McClinton puts herself on the line to report
- Read our entire Shades of black series
- Have you experienced colorism? Share your story here
I take a deep breath and ready my fingers. I admonish myself for being theatrical about something so mundane. Another deep breath.
“Here we go,” I mutter, pressing enter.
Continue reading...The upside down: inside Manhattan’s Lowline subterranean park
In two years’ time, the Lower East Side will be home to the world’s first underground ‘green’ space – the Lowline
To get a glimpse of what will eventually become the Lowline, a subterranean Eden being billed as the world’s first underground park, you have to swipe your MetroCard at the Lower East Side’s Delancey Street station, go down one flight of stairs, go down another, slither through a few characteristically congested subway corridors, and then up another flight, to the J train platform.
Here, in the crucible of Manhattan’s public transportation system, with its slow, industrial wheeze, is an abandoned space the size of a football field. Seventy years ago it was the Williamsburg Bridge trolley terminal, transporting city folk between boroughs. But since 1948 it’s existed in a state of dark, musty desertion, save for tall metal columns, a few men in hazmat suits and the outlines of the balloon loops in which the trolleys once turned, which will be integrated into the park’s walkways.
Continue reading...Punch-ups and party splits: what reporting on Brexit has taught me | Anushka Asthana
These are the lessons I’ve learned in chaotic political times
Ever since I joined the lobby of parliamentary reporters 10 years ago, politics has been going through feverish times. In the final 36 hours before the 2015 election, I remember standing in an Asda warehouse at 2am, eight months pregnant in a hi-vis jacket, trying to keep my eyes open as I interviewed David Cameron, then the prime minister, on camera. It can’t get more intense than this, I thought. Then I joined the Guardian as political editor in March 2016 and the ground beneath my feet hasn’t stopped moving. Last year I became presenter of the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, but a large part of my job still involves reporting on the upheavals of Brexit. Here are a few things covering this spectacularly chaotic political era has taught me.
Passions are riding high
I recently heard a centre-right remainer MP casually describe a staunch Brexiter as a racist. An aide sniped back: “And you’re the worst politician in the country!” Soon after, I was standing in a television green room, a mini sandwich in one hand, when the row erupted again. The aide stormed in, spoiling for a fight, almost squaring up to the MP. For a minute I was back at university in the middle of a nightclub standoff. It ended with an apology, but it was an altercation that wouldn’t have happened a year ago. So much about the mood of politics has changed. Look at Labour peer Andrew Adonis, transformed from measured technocrat into tub-thumping remain zealot. Look at the new wave of activists. I met a 64-year-old woman outside parliament wrapped in an EU flag; she said she had never protested before. Nearby, another woman of a similar age told me she would riot if Brexit did not happen. The abuse directed at MPs is not new, but it is worse than ever. I spent a day with former Tory Anna Soubry, and by 11am she had received two death threats. Committed Brexiters have faced similar.
Troye Sivan: ‘I have to get comfortable with being effeminate’
The former YouTuber turned musician and actor talks about sudden stardom, queer pride and life as a showman
Troye Sivan is posing in full view of the street, delighting the small groups of teenagers who stop outside the photo studio to gawp. Some of them know who he is. The rest can tell he must be Someone. The South African-born Australian, 23, is as luminous as a cherub and has no qualms about giving it his best Rodin: foot perched on a starry plinth, trousers gaping around his slim frame.
Sivan has been preparing to be looked at since before puberty. As of last year, he is a pop star – not quite a household name, but big enough to command an invitation from Taylor Swift to duet on her recent US tour, and a guest spot from old friend Ariana Grande on his 2018 album Bloom. Critics compared Bloom’s euphoric synth-pop to cult Swedish pop star Robyn (the ecstatic My My My!) and 4AD goths This Mortal Coil (The Good Side, a spectral break-up ballad). He’s also an actor, recently lauded for his supporting role in the gay conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, with Nicole Kidman and Lucas Hedges.
Continue reading...Paul Kagame orders release of women and girls jailed over abortion in Rwanda
Women’s rights activists welcome presidential pardon of 367 female prisoners as evidence of progress
Rwanda’s president has pardoned hundreds of girls and women jailed for abortion.
The women are expected to be released immediately under the presidential prerogative.
Continue reading...Designers behind Princess Awesome to launch gender-neutral clothing for boys
Crowdfunding campaign for Boy, Wonder reaches 50% of target funding in first hour
A children’s clothing company which revolutionised gender-neutral clothing for girls has turned their attention to boys, launching a crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday that reached 50% of its funding aim in the first hour.
Frustrated that they couldn’t find shirts for their five sons with unicorns on them or bright colours, animals, sparkles and rainbows, Eva St Clair and Rebecca Melsky decided to make them themselves.
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