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These yachts are highly popular with the ‘super-bourgeoisie’ – and getting bigger. Can anything be done to stop them destroying our seas?
Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don’t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco Yacht Show, I’ve got to take my trainers off, and I’m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?
To be honest, I’ve come dressed all wrong for Europe’s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it’s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone – whether they’re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers – seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I’m not part of it. Yet.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:22 GMT
As a freaky Val Kilmer doppelganger stars in a new western and faux starlet Tilly Norwood is set for her feature debut, experts are split on whether mainstream adoption is a long way down the line – or just around the corner
‘Don’t fear the dead – and don’t fear me.” An exact facsimile of a young Val Kilmer, not quite dead and not quite alive, utters that baiting line in the trailer for the new western As Deep as the Grave. Director Coerte Voorhees knows exactly what he is doing – this is an AI-created version of the late actor, approved by his family but bringing with it a heap of controversy about whether such technology could make flesh-and-blood thespians redundant.
Not just yet, judging by the extended glimpse of the film released earlier this year: it looks like a thirtysomething Kilmer, if a robot version had been sent back to the 1920s American wilderness by Skynet and, as well as being strangely rigid, had forgotten to download his voice, let alone his signature air of spacey shrewdness. Kilmer’s estate signed off on it, citing his enthusiasm for new technology that expands storytelling, but surely he would have been dismayed by this freaky doppelganger.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 06:00:18 GMT
As a Traitors obsessive, Gamble is in his element hosting its hugely popular companion show, Uncloaked. He discusses keeping the show’s secrets, edgelord comics and how he became known as a ‘mega wife guy’
Ed Gamble does not like seeing himself on screen. “I know a lot of comics who struggle with watching themselves,” he says. “No one should be having to look at their own face so much. It feels simultaneously arrogant and also the most self-flagellating thing you can do.”
Unfortunately for him, he is inescapable. Gamble presents the BBC’s wildly successful companion show to the Traitors, The Traitors: Uncloaked, along with the hugely popular podcast Off Menu, with the comedian and current Celebrity Traitors contestant James Acaster.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 04:00:15 GMT
With living memory fading and thousands of Welsh coal tips still posing a threat, a community robbed of justice reflects on how to keep legacy alive
David Davies was eight years old when he survived the coal tip slide that killed a generation of children in the Welsh village of Aberfan. Most years the disaster’s anniversary passes quietly, he says; much of the community chooses to spend the day reflecting and mourning in the privacy of their homes.
His own recollection of what happened on the cloudy autumn morning in 1966 is hazy. His father, one of the volunteers who uncovered the corpses of more than 100 children from the buried Pantglas primary school, said that when he was handed his son’s unconscious body, he initially thought he was dead.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:00:21 GMT
A Belgian criminal organisation’s links with a Brazilian cocaine gang have been the focus of a major trial in Brussels, where smuggling links have been alleged between European players and the drug cartels of Latin America
In the early hours of 7 September, a convoy of heavily armed police swept through the sleeping streets of central Brussels towards the Haren district, on the city’s north-eastern outskirts. They made their way to 22 Avenue du Bourget, a militarised bunker-like complex that was the former headquarters of Nato.
The modernist complex, with its austere and functional architecture, was hastily built in 1967 and houses the Justitia courtroom, where Belgium’s federal trials are now held. It was here that the perpetrators and accomplices of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and the 2016 Brussels attacks were tried in 2022.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 06:00:19 GMT
The government says it can transform the state with AI, but it is no match for the resulting stream of machine-generated slop. And we all pay the cost
Another morning, another avalanche of emails. Even after a guilty cull, my inbox is sitting at well over 7,000, but lately I’ve started subscribing to the Quentin Crisp theory of housework: why bother, when after four years or so you stop noticing the accumulating dust? Empty inboxes just fill up again anyway.
In theory, email was supposed to save hours of meetings, phone calls and standing over photocopiers. Instead, we just spend hours deleting stuff people wouldn’t have bothered telling us if it had meant picking up the phone, but which they can now spam to their entire database at the click of a button. The glorious ease and convenience of being able to reach the world in seconds came, we now know, with the inconvenience of them being able to reach you right back.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:00:17 GMT
Inquiry chair says failure to advise care homes to isolate people discharged from hospital was ‘significant oversight’
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The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.
Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said it was a “significant omission” that the government did not advise that patients discharged from hospitals into care homes should be isolated, causing the virus to spread rapidly among residents and staff.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:00:35 GMT
Victoria police arrested the 43-year-old Tarrawingee man on Monday afternoon after the incident in Wangaratta
Brendan Nugent’s family say Haines has been their friend for more than 20 years
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Helen Haines’ alleged attacker, Brendan Nugent, has been charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally cause serious injury and the commonwealth offence of causing harm to a commonwealth public official.
He will be held overnight to appear at Wangaratta magistrates court on Wednesday, Victoria police confirmed in a statement, adding that it would be alleged the attack was targeted.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:18:58 GMT
Cabinet colleagues have previously called for an increase but chancellor feels it might ultimately cost the Treasury
John Healey will not raise capital gains tax in next week’s budget, despite previous calls to do so from cabinet colleagues including Louise Haigh and Wes Streeting.
The chancellor has decided that any increase might ultimately cost the Treasury if wealthy individuals defer the sale of assets or move them out of the country, according to Treasury sources.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:27:40 GMT
Yellow severe weather warning issued for first named storm of season with gusts of up to 60mph expected
The first named storm of the season, Austen, is expected to bring gusts of up to 60mph to southern areas of the UK at the end of the week, forecasters said.
While there would be spells of rain and showers for many on Tuesday and Wednesday, by Thursday Storm Austen would be approaching the south-west of the UK, the Met Office said.
Continue reading...Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:38:01 GMT