Experts voice concern over growth of ‘deviant’ videos, including foster-child abuse fantasies, on Pornhub and other mainstream sites
Groups working on the frontline in the fight against child abuse in the UK have warned that an increase in abuse-themed pornography is “normalising” child abuse.
Children’s charity Barnado’s said it is working with vulnerable children who are being put at risk by “deviant” pornography that fetishises fantasies of sex with children.
Continue reading...Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted killing nine people he befriended online after they expressed suicidal thoughts
A court in Japan has sentenced to death a man dubbed the “Twitter killer” for the murders in 2017 of nine people whom he befriended online after they had expressed suicidal thoughts.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted strangling and dismembering his victims, eight of whom were women, over the course of three months. The youngest was 15 and the oldest 26.
Continue reading...Jill Biden says writer of opinion article is ‘diminishing’ the achievements of women as presidential transition team demands apology
The Wall Street Journal has come under a torrent of denunciation for publishing a “sexist” opinion article that calls Jill Biden, the first lady-in-waiting, “kiddo”, and questions her right to use “Dr” in front of her name.
The article, written by a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University Joseph Epstein, purports to offer Biden “a bit of advice”. Opening on the provocative note of calling her “Madame (sic) First Lady – Mrs Biden – Jill – kiddo”, the author goes on to recommend that she drop the honorific of “Dr” before her name.
Continue reading...Hayden Christensen returns as Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series, while Chadwick Boseman won’t be replaced for Black Panther sequel
Disney has unveiled a huge slew of new projects for the next decade at an investor event.
Speaking on Thursday, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy announced that the new Star Wars film, Rogue Squadron, will be directed by Wonder Woman’s Patty Jenkins – the first time a female director has taken charge of one of the franchise films.
Continue reading...Mexico again tops the list, with 13 killings, says International Federation of Journalists
Forty-two journalists and media workers have been killed while doing their jobs this year, according to the International Federation of Journalists’ annual tally. A further 235 are in prison in cases related to their work, the report showed.
Mexico topped the 2020 list of countries where the most journalists were killed, for the fourth time in five years, with 13 killings, followed by Pakistan with five. Afghanistan, India, Iraq and Nigeria recorded three killings each.
Continue reading...The Strictly Come Dancing judge reveals which contestant surprised him the most and why he’s looking forward to getting booed twice a day in Robin Hood
You’re a panto regular – what do you enjoy most about it?
I love live theatre – it’s where I started my career back home in Australia and I got into it as soon as I arrived in the UK. As much as I love my screen career, you simply can’t beat helping an audience to suspend their disbelief for a few hours and enjoy a shared experience live and in real time. While we all take it seriously and it’s hard work, panto is fun, festive and lets me show audiences what I can do when I’m not sitting behind my Strictly desk.
Panto has never fully been exported to Australia. When did you first see one?
The first ever pantomime I was in! Our producers, Qdos Entertainment, once called offering me the job of directing one of their productions, but due to filming commitments I couldn’t make it work. They called back five minutes later and asked me if I wanted to be in the panto instead and I jumped at the chance. It was a baptism of fire – wearing a dress, ridiculously high heels and getting booed twice a day. But I loved it, and I still do.
The Desert Oracle, the former Wonkette owner’s pocket-sized magazine, has proven a cult hit while refusing to establish an online presence
UFOs, doomed hikers, William Burroughs, singing sand dunes, Elvis, ghosts, roadrunners and rattlesnakes – the Desert Oracle packs a lot of weird, dark matter between its bright yellow covers.
The pocket-sized magazine, which looks like a cross between a guide book and a punk zine, explores the stranger side of desert life. Created in the arid beauty of Joshua Tree in California, it has proven a cult hit devoured by readers from Los Angeles to London.
Continue reading...The CNN commentator tells how, too tearful to read his notes, he spoke from the heart – and for millions of Americans – after Biden’s win
When the US presidential election was finally called for Joe Biden on 7 November, the CNN commentator Van Jones made a tearful speech live on air that captured in two minutes the frayed emotions of a contest that had dragged on for days. A regular on CNN over the past decade, Jones trained as a lawyer at Yale and has spent more than 25 years fighting for criminal justice reform. A special adviser for green jobs in the early days of the Obama administration, he crossed party lines to work with the Trump administration in 2018, helping to draft the First Step Act and drawing criticism from fellow progressives in the process. Jones, who is 52 and was born in Tennessee, lives in Los Angeles and has two sons with his ex-wife Jana Carter.
Tell me about the lead-up to that CNN speech and the state of your nerves.
We were all just exhausted. We had been doing 17-hour days, for five days. We knew that it was going to be a long, slow count, but that doesn’t mean that your body and heart and soul can endure it with perfect equipoise. When it was finally called, my phone started blowing up with text messages from Muslim friends, friends from immigrant communities. One guy said, “I’m not crying, you’re crying,” just as a little a joke about how emotional everybody was. And it just hit me what a burden we’ve all been carrying, especially people who are in harm’s way of the president’s rhetoric. When they switched over to our panel, and Anderson [Cooper] asked me how I was doing, I couldn’t see my notes – you see me looking down trying to read them but my eyes are full of tears. So I just started free associating. I just had to speak from the heart.
The 2012 killing of Regina Martínez, who was investigating links between organised crime and politics, began a wave of violence in the most dangerous country to be a reporter
Regina Martínez Pérez was considered an enemy of the state. The 48-year-old journalist had made powerful foes investigating allegations of collusion between political leaders, security forces and narcotraffickers in the Mexican region of Veracruz.
She was a source of irritation for four consecutive state governors, highlighting violence, abuses of power and cover-ups in the pages of Mexico’s foremost investigative news magazine, Proceso.
Continue reading...Conservation charity videos prompt speculation the brothers are engaged in publicity tug of war
It was a roster of “wonderful talent”, Prince William said earlier this week. And so it gave him great pleasure to honour the winners of the Tusk awards, organised by a conservation charity working in Africa of which he is patron, at an online ceremony.
“I hope their stories go far and wide,” the Duke of Cambridge continued, in a video call from one of his several drawing rooms. His hope, he said, was that “young people look to these role models and say: ‘I can do the same.’”
Continue reading...Rising violence by militants raises fears for press freedom after US troops withdraw in May
The Taliban have denied they are deliberately targeting journalists in attacks amid the surge in violence throughout Afghanistan.
The US watchdog Sigar (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) says Taliban violence has risen by 50% since September, with media workers saying they don’t feel safe doing their jobs.
Continue reading...While the fourth series has come under fire for factual inaccuracy, it is just one of many series to reflect the royals long history of mythmaking
‘Let’s get it over with,” sighs Prince Philip as he reluctantly prepares to venture towards a crowd of adoring subjects. On the one hand, this moment in The Crown has the ring of truth: realistically, why would members of the royal family be enthusiastic about meeting yet another mob of curtsying, awestruck plebs? It must be tremendously boring. And yet, on the other hand, how dare they? Who pays their wages?
A few things have become clear during the fourth season of Peter Morgan’s Netflix epic. Firstly, it’s just as well The Crown isn’t on the BBC. Because if it was, the nation’s enraged rightwing culture warriors would have descended upon Broadcasting House and stormed it. Secondly, this is a portrait of managed decline. And finally, The Crown means The Queen. But Olivia Colman’s Elizabeth II is more Canute than Britannia – not ruling the waves but nobly, if eventually absurdly, trying to hold them back.
Continue reading...Actor who plays Princess Margaret adds her voice to calls for Netflix to add a disclaimer
Helena Bonham Carter has said The Crown has a “moral responsibility” to tell viewers that it is a drama, rather than historical fact, in the wake of calls for a “health warning” for people watching the series.
The actor, who played Princess Margaret in series three and four of the Netflix hit drama, told an official podcast for the show that there was an important distinction between “our version”, and the “real version”.
Continue reading...The Morning Joe host, author of a new book on Harry S Truman, sees parallels in the two presidents’ efforts to rebuild
Joe Scarborough had been discussing Joe Biden’s cabinet, Donald Trump’s delusions and America’s battered claim to be the indispensable nation when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“I knew yesterday morning it was Mika’s and my anniversary and she said nothing and about five o’clock in the afternoon I walked in and I said, ‘Is today a special day for you?’” Scarborough shared with his TV guests last Wednesday. “She goes, ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever.’”
Continue reading...Annual special – where garish sweaters meet unrestrained children – airs on Friday evening
It is possibly the most anticipated moment in Ireland’s cultural calendar, a television event that draws huge ratings, unites the diaspora and is parsed as a barometer for the mood of the nation.
Expectation builds months in advance, rumours about the theme, leaks about participants, sometimes alarm that the formula may change.
Continue reading...Actor ordered to pay £630,000 after libel action against Sun over ‘wife beater’ allegations
The Hollywood actor Johnny Depp has been refused permission to appeal after losing his high stakes libel action against the Sun over its description of him as a “wife beater”.
A high court judge also ordered the actor to make an initial payment to the Sun’s publishers, New Group Newspapers (NGN), of almost £630,000 in legal fees.
Continue reading...The pop star’s Disney+ movie about quarantine album Folklore reveals the potency of her songwriting, though it’s hazy on any ‘pandemic epiphanies’
Pre-pandemic, few artists were so keenly attuned to the music industry’s calendar as Taylor Swift. She timed her album releases for awards contention and singles to sustain her world tours; the promotional cycle for 1989, released in 2014, seemed to go on for years. With coronavirus, that “circus” – as she puts it on Mirrorball, one of a few songs on her “quarantine album”, Folklore, that address the pandemic directly – was abruptly called off.
Stripped of those structures, “this lockdown could have been a time where I absolutely lost my mind”, Swift says in The Long Pond Studio Sessions, a film that explores the making and meaning of Folklore. Instead, in a matter of months, she created an album as good as any she has ever written. She collaborated remotely with the National’s Aaron Dessner, writing to his musical sketches and self-recording her performances at home.
Continue reading...The veteran Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has publicly named 21 Republican senators he says have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for [Donald] Trump and his fitness” for office.
As Trump continued to try to subvert the results of a presidential election he clearly lost to Joe Biden, Bernstein said on Twitter he was “not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially [sic]”.
Continue reading...Former rivals to star in Leveson-style inquiry into mogul’s near-monopoly of the country’s media
In high public office, both men lived and died at the word of the world’s most influential media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. But now two former Australian prime ministers are at the vanguard of a campaign to redress the balance of power. It is a movement that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, the respective former Labor and Liberal leaders of Australia, hope will go on to undermine all of Murdoch’s international enterprises.
The two former PMs were once rivals but are to appear as joint star witnesses at an upcoming Australian parliamentary inquiry into Murdoch’s dominance of the Australian political debate. Both are to argue that News Corp Australia has become the propaganda arm of the rightwing Liberal government.
Continue reading...Princess’s brother says investigation should be free to examine every aspect of 1995 Martin Bashir interview
Earl Spencer has said he is “not at all satisfied” with the scope of the BBC’s investigation into the 1995 Panorama interview with his sister Princess Diana.
The news came as a source close to Prince Harry said he is “getting regular updates” about the inquiry into journalist Martin Bashir’s conduct in arranging the landmark show.
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