Category Archives: Media

Trailer released for Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey TV series

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Footage suggests Harry will revisit trauma of his mother’s death in Apple TV+ series on mental health

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex feature in an emotional trailer for Harry’s mental health documentary series with Oprah Winfrey, and footage hints that he will revisit the trauma he experienced after his mother’s death.

The two-minute trailer includes archive film from the 1997 funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, showing Harry, then 12, standing with his head bowed as his mother’s coffin passes by, alongside the Prince of Wales, who then turns to speak to his son.

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‘No safe place’: Associated Press reporter describes Gaza office attack

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A rush for escape as Israeli forces bombed the building that housed the US news agency and Al Jazeera

On Saturday, Israeli forces bombed the office which houses Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza, alleging that Hamas military intelligence was operating inside the building.

Twelve AP staffers and freelancers were working and resting in the bureau when the Israeli military telephoned a warning, giving occupants of the building one hour to evacuate. The AP journalist Fares Akram told how he escaped the building.

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How missing CCTV footage turned a Chinese family’s tragedy into a national conspiracy

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A mother’s search for the truth about her son’s death exposes the level of public distrust in China’s authorities

On Mother’s Day last Sunday, 17-year-old Lin Weiqi wished his mother – referred to only as Madame Lu in Chinese media – a good day. “Mum, enjoy your day,” he said to her that morning. He was Lu’s only child. Like most Chinese parents of the one-child generation, Lin was her pride and joy.

Late in the afternoon, before Lin had gone back to his school in the south-western city of Chengdu, Lu prepared snacks for him in case he was hungry in the evening. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until an hour later.

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Are they having a laugh? How The Father’s posters get the film so wrong

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Anthony Hopkins’ harrowing dementia drama is the sensation of this awards season. So why is it endlessly being advertised as another movie altogether?

The Father is not out in the UK until next month, but we already know plenty about it. We know that its script won an Oscar for the uncanny way it dropped the viewer into the mind of someone with dementia. We know that Anthony Hopkins gave such a harrowing, desperate performance that he also won an Oscar. Perhaps you even read the New Yorker interview with Hopkins about the role, which inspired him to recount the circumstances of his own father’s death in devastating detail. Basically, we know that The Father is quite a dark film.

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Prince Harry appears to criticise way he was raised by his father

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Duke of Sussex also speaks of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ in royal family in new interview in US

The Duke of Sussex has appeared to criticise the way he was raised by Prince Charles, discussing the “genetic pain and suffering” in the royal family and stressing that he wanted to “break the cycle” for his children.

In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview, Prince Harry, who is expecting a daughter with Meghan and is already father to Archie, two, likened life in the royal family to a mix between being in The Truman Show and being in a zoo.

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News Corp exclusive on Chinese ‘bioweapons’ based on discredited 2015 book of conspiracy theories

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Report in the Australian newspaper promoting Sharri Markson’s book on origins of Covid criticised as misleading and alarmist by China analysts

The Australian’s exclusive about a “chilling” document produced by Chinese military scientists is based on a discredited 2015 book containing conspiracy theories about biological warfare which is freely available on the internet.

Written by the paper’s investigations writer, Sharri Markson, the report last Saturday said Chinese military scientists “discussed the weaponisation of Sars coronaviruses five years before the Covid-19 pandemic” and predicted a third world war would be fought with biological weapons.

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‘Weak’ US let Saudis jail more dissidents, says rights group

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Lack of US sanctions on crown prince led to harsher sentences for critics of regime, Grant Liberty reports

The Biden administration’s failure to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has led to a increase in severe sentences for political prisoners in the kingdom, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty found that twice as many harsh sentences had been meted out to Saudi prisoners of conscience in April than in the first three months of this year combined. It followed the Biden administration’s decision on 26 February to publish an intelligence report that showed the crown prince, “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.

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Trading up: one woman’s quest to swap a hairpin for a house

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Demi Skipper would like a new house, but she’s not buying one. Instead she’s planning a daring strategy of trades – and millions are following her journey

While many of us were still finding novelty in group Zoom calls last May, Demi Skipper decided she was going to get a house. But not using money. Instead, she was going to trade items.

Now the owner of one of only a few Chipotle celebrity cards in the world, and hoping to reach a house by the end of summer, the 29-year-old’s journey started where many voyages do: in a YouTube hole.

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It’s not just racism and sexism. The Golden Globes have been sunk by sheer stupidity

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The preposterous Hollywood Foreign Press Association gravy train might have chugged on for ever if its members had just swallowed their pride and done more for diversity

An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that notoriously rackety organisation which administers the Golden Globes, has shown an eminently corruptible body drenched in antediluvian attitudes; this has resulted in NBC cancelling its TV coverage of next year’s ceremony and Tom Cruise handing back the three Globes he has personally won over the years.

Related: Golden Globes backlash: Tom Cruise hands back awards and NBC drops broadcast

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‘People got nervous if a bag was left on a chair’: Paul Johnson on Northern Ireland

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The Guardian’s former deputy editor recalls his time reporting from Belfast during the Troubles

Paul Johnson has a vivid memory of one of his most dispiriting moments as the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent.

It was April 1986 and he was covering a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) conference. A warmup speaker for the party leader, Ian Paisley, electrified the audience with a suggestion.

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Italian public broadcaster asked to stop promoting ‘intolerable’ content

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Activists claim Rai regulary breaks its own code of ethics when it should be setting example to rest of industry

Activists opposed to racism, homophobia, antisemitism and sexism in the Italian media have written to the public broadcaster, Rai, urging it to stop promoting “intolerable” content.

Rai apologised recently for the use of blackface in its shows, and advised editors to stop airing productions in which performers wear makeup to imitate black people, but stopped short of an outright ban.

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No shame: the podcast taking on the Arab world’s sex and gender taboos

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Eib is now in its seventh season, fearlessly tackling subjects from Beirut’s drag queen scene to Jordanian widows’ rights

Rude, fault or blemish; flaw, disgrace or shame. The word has many shades, but nearly every woman who grows up in Arabic-speaking households knows its singular weight. “Anything related to women is eib,” says Tala El-Issa, from her home in Cairo. “If they want to talk about their bodies, it’s eib, their problems – eib. Just being a woman is almost eib.”

When the team at Sowt, an Arabic podcasting network based across the Middle East, wanted to create a show that charged fearlessly into the region’s taboos around sex and gender, the title was obvious. “Eib” is now in its seventh season, the company’s longest-lasting podcast and its most popular.

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Trump DoJ seized Washington Post reporters’ phone records, paper says

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Newspaper ‘deeply troubled’ by revelation that records were secretly obtained over three months in 2017

The phone-call records of three reporters with the Washington Post were secretly obtained by officials with Donald Trump’s justice department over a period of three months in 2017, the newspaper reported.

Related: The sleazy, sordid Matt Gaetz scandal: are the walls now closing in on him?

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Fox News made me do it: Capitol attack suspect pulls ‘Foxitis’ defense

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Anthony Antonio, who faces five charges over role in January riot, ‘started believing what was being fed to him’, lawyer says

The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.

Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday.

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Noel Clarke accused of sexual harassment on Doctor Who set

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Exclusive: BBC faces questions as further allegations made about Clarke – and co-star John Barrowman is accused of exposing himself

The Noel Clarke sexual harassment controversy threatens to embroil the BBC after several sources came forward to allege they were sexually harassed or inappropriately touched by the actor on a flagship show, Doctor Who.

Another Doctor Who actor, John Barrowman, has also been accused of repeatedly exposing himself to co-workers on two BBC productions, prompting questions about whether the corporation allowed a lax culture on its sets during the mid-2000s.

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Hillary Clinton: ‘There has to be a global reckoning with disinformation’

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The former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped

Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works.

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‘I seek a kind person’: the Guardian ad that saved my Jewish father from the Nazis

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In 1938, there was a surge of classified ads in this newspaper as parents – including my grandparents – scrambled to get their children out of the Reich. What became of the families?

On Wednesday 3 August 1938, a short advertisement appeared on the second page of the Manchester Guardian, under the title “Tuition”.

“I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family,” the advert said, under the name Borger, giving the address of an apartment on Hintzerstrasse, in Vienna’s third district.

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Facebook fudge potentially lets Trump live to lie another day

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Analysis: Trump will try to have it both ways over the verdict – decrying censorship but also eyeing an eventual return

It was not so much “Release the Kraken!” as “please tell the Kraken to pace around the room a few more times while we think about it”.

Facebook’s oversight board ruled that Donald Trump should remain banned from the platform for incendiary posts on the day of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. But it also told the company that its “vague, standardless penalty” should be reviewed within six months.

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UK watchdog bans Max Mara advert over model’s ‘gaunt’ appearance

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Advertising Standards Authority says ad that ran in Sunday Times magazine was irresponsible

A Max Mara advert has been banned for featuring a model with an “unhealthily thin” and “gaunt” appearance.

The Advertising Standards Authority, which received three complaints about the ad, said the model had been photographed from the side, drawing attention to the shape of her body and highlighting her very thin frame and the protrusion of her hip bone, which was visible through her dress.

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