Sprinter won five Tour de France stages in top career
Messy exit from JaycoAlUla team took ‘significant toll’
Caleb Ewan, at his peak one of Australian cycling’s greatest talents, has stunned the sport by announcing his immediate retirement.
Ewan delivered his bombshell decision on social media, saying events of the last two years – especially around his messy exit from top Australian team Jayco AlUla – have “taken a significant toll on my relationship with the sport”.
Britain and India have agreed a long-desired trade deal that ministers said would add £4.8bn to the UK economy a year by 2040.
The agreement, which was finalised on Tuesday after more than three years of negotiations under successive governments, has long been touted as one of the biggest prizes of Brexit.
One of the prince’s well-heeled friends should give our foremost podcaster a lesson on when to keep schtum
Prince Harry wanted a completely new life and he has got one. He is no longer a working royal, but a rich person. His Rich Highness. This involves a change of mindset in a mind that is somewhat hard to describe as quick on the uptake.
Being rich is all well and good, of course, and the duke certainly moaned enough about money when he was still within the confines of royal duty, to hear insiders tell it. But the reason you don’t see Beyoncé out there on the talkshow circuit whining about how much money she has to spend on security – easily eight figures a year – is that she, a very rich person, seems to understand that regrettably it goes with the territory, and that you have to pay for it out of your riches.
I thought the two sides of me – the one who wants children and the one who doesn’t – would duke it out till death
The light in the bookstore bathroom was dim. Even so, I could see the blood on the toilet paper. I wiped some more to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, and then I stood up, grabbing on to the porcelain sink so I wouldn’t fall.
Suddenly, I understood. I didn’t want to lose my baby. I wanted to be this baby’s mother more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world. I would do anything in my power to keep it alive. The trouble: there wasn’t much I could do.
WPBSA chair: ‘Someone has to say this is snooker’s time’
Zhao Xintong’s world title win could aid prospects
The head of snooker’s governing body believes Zhao Xintong’s coronation as world champion could prove to be one of the most significant moments in the sport’s history as the game now targets entry into the Olympic Games in 2032.
Zhao became the first Chinese winner of the World Snooker Championship on Monday, defeating Mark Williams to cap a remarkable comeback, nine months after returning to the sport from a 20-month suspension for his involvement in a match-fixing scandal.
The Welsh first minister and leader of the Welsh Labour party has said she is “losing patience” with UK Labour and made it clear she is “tacking to the left” as she tries to counter a growing threat from Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.
Eluned Morgan told the Guardian she wanted Keir Starmer to rethink policy changes on welfare and the winter fuel allowance and described the Labour party as a “messy family”.
Kamala Harris snuck in back door leaving fashion icons at forefront as New York’s party of the year ran with the theme ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’
The party of the year had the potential to be a political firecracker. New York’s ultimate see-and-be-seen event, the Met Gala, was also the launch of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, a fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum honouring the subversive power of black style and the role of dandyism in expanding ideals of masculinity. In other words, the A-list were showing up to raise a toast to diversity under the watchful eye of an administration bent on reversing it.
On the night, the resistance came to party, not to protest. Glamour was the guest of honour, with politics very much the plus-one. The tempered tone of the night was typified by Kamala Harris, the most high-profile political guest, slipping in a side entrance to avoid the photographers. The night was a joyful and thoughtful celebration of black heritage and creativity, but it was not a forthright statement about politics in 2025.
Arcade Crew/Sleepy Mill Studio; PC Build a card deck of landscape features; organise your territory on a Tetris-like playfield; battle enemies and bosses to progress. It might sound complicated, but this is an ingenious experiment in game design by combination
The indie video game scene is currently dominated by two unassailable genre titans: the rogue-like and the deck-builder. The first is a type of action adventure in which players explore procedurally generated landscapes, where they battle enemies, level up and then die – whereupon they start all over again from scratch. The latter is about building decks of collectible cards (think Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering, but digital) and fighting with them. Titles that combine both in interesting ways – such as Balatro and Slay the Spire – can become huge crossover hits. But the market is getting saturated and so developers are having to find new genres to mix into this potent game design cocktail.
Hence Drop Duchy, a game that attempts to combine the rogue-like deck-builder with … Tetris. Yes, the action takes place on a playfield in which differently shaped objects drop from the top of the screen to the bottom – except here, each object is either a landscape-type or a building, and the player isn’t only trying to create unbroken lines, they’re trying to place these units effectively to generate resources. Place a farm near a grassy plain block, for example, and it will produce wheat. Put a wooden fortress near a forest and it will generate farmland and swordsmen. When you complete a line, it doesn’t disappear: instead, it multiplies the resources you’re gathering. Why do you need the aforementioned soldiers? Well, alongside placing your own military bases, you also have to find space for random enemy bases, too, and at the end of the round, when all the blocks have been placed, you enter a combat sequence in which you align your military units to take on your foe.
The delicate flavour of this fleeting seasonal treat means it requires a deft touch in the kitchen, says our panel of stalk-fanciers
What unexpected things can I make with asparagus?
“The goal is to do as little as possible to it,” says Ben Lippett, author of How I Cook (published in September). “If you start dressing up asparagus with fancy cooking techniques, you lose its magic.” That’s not to say you should just boil the spears and be done with it, mind: “Try pairing them with relatively high-impact flavours, but nothing that will steal the show,” Lippett says. “Much as with a salad dressing, you want something with richness, fragrance, acidity and salinity.” Instead of a gribiche-style sauce, for example, sub in Kewpie (Japanese mayo), pickled ginger, chives, sesame seeds and frozen peas “to make a spoonable condiment”. Or cook asparagus chunks with lots of butter and a shot of water, then “finish with lemon and grapefruit segments, cracked hazelnuts and sheets of comté”.
Asparagus recipes often lean towards salads, which is all well and good until the weather misses the spring memo. And, in that scenario, Sophie Wyburd, author of Tucking In, has your back with a warm, in-between-seasons side. “Make a salsa verde with loads of mint, basil, parsley, capers and dijon mustard, then blister chopped asparagus in a very hot frying pan with a little water to get that steam going.” Once tender, toss with plump chickpeas: “That goes particularly well with roast lamb or chicken,” she says. Ramuel Scully, executive chef and co-owner of Scullyin central London, meanwhile, steams his spears to “keep them super-sweet”, then adds some tea – “Try oolong” – to the boiling water to “infuse the asparagus with extra flavour”. Finish off with salt and a squeeze of lemon, then top with crispy chilli oil and tahini: “Both work great with asparagus.”
An agent hosts a fancy soiree in the Hollywood Hills in this gently incisive drama about the privileged class, written and directed by Nadia Conners
As the sun goes down in the Hollywood Hills, talent agent Sammy (Walton Goggins) and his actor wife Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) prepare for a house party they are throwing. It’s pretty quickly apparent that, despite Sammy’s sudden lustful lunges at his wife and her tinkling laughter, there is plenty of backstory to be revealed behind the landscaped garden succulents. Sammy’s career is in trouble and he is worried about retaining his star client, megalomaniac director Gerald (Rufus Sewell). Rose is not getting cast much these days, and while she dotes on their only child Wilder (Roland Rubio), she misses her career. Up-and-coming star Delia (Eva De Dominici) is coming by for the evening, as is big-time movie star Lucien (Pedro Pascal), who just happens to be Rose’s old flame from back in the days when they were struggling theatre actors together.
As an ensemble of extras graze on the finger-food buffet and a “spirit photographer” snaps portraits of people and their supposed auras, Rose deals with a mysterious guest. Elderly Helen (Lois Smith, profoundly touching) has rocked up in the driveway in her Prius and insists this is her house. Rose juggles trying to find someone to collect Helen and getting Wilder to go to sleep while the party rumbles on.
Lewis Hamilton took a swipe at Ferrari in Miami showing again how broadcasting team chats enlivens races
“Have a tea break while you’re at it” was Lewis Hamilton’s sarcasm-drenched reply to his Ferrari team as they dallied over making a strategy call at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday. It was the stuff of soap opera, enlivening what was in racing terms a McLaren walkover at the Hard Rock Stadium.
Broadcasting team radio is one of the best innovations in the modern era of F1 and for all that it is considered a serious tool by drivers and teams, it is always at its best when vituperative or funny. Better still, both at once.
Premier League agress to bring game forward to 16 May
Spurs need to beat Bodø/Glimt to reach final on 21 May
Tottenham’s Premier League visit to Aston Villa has been brought forward by 48 hours in order to help them prepare for a Europa League final they have not reached yet.
Ange Postecoglou’s side were originally scheduled to visit Villa on the afternoon of Sunday 18 May but the encounter will now take place on the evening of Friday 16 May after the Premier League accepted a rescheduling request from the London club.
When the Sainsbury Wing opened, it was called ‘vulgar pastiche’. Now, after an £85m revamp, it has become the famous gallery’s main entrance. But have its spiky complexities been tamed? And why all the empty space?
Few parts of any city have seen so many style wars waged over their future as the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. Nelson may be safely ensconced on his column, but another Battle of Trafalgar has been rumbling for decades beneath his feet, seeing architectural grenades hurled to and fro at the western end of the National Gallery.
A 1950s competition first produced a bold brutalist plan to extend the gallery, formed of crisscrossing cantilevered planes jutting out into the square, but it was deemed too daring. The 1980s saw a glassy, hi-tech proposal, crowned with futuristic pylons, but it was famously dismissed by the then Prince Charles as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. Finally, emerging victorious in the 1990s were the US pioneers of postmodernism Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Their high mannerist mashup combined corinthian pilasters and big tinted windows with witty abandon. “Palladio and modernism fight it out on the main facade,” declared the architects, as they immortalised the battle of taste in stone and glass. The Sainsbury Wing was Grade-I listed in 2018, one of the youngest ever buildings to receive such protection.
Amid outrage over ‘far-fetched’ plans to revive Alcatraz, Trump is pushing to expand Ice detention to other closed lockups marked by scandals
Donald Trump’s proposal to reopen Alcatraz, the infamous prison shuttered more than 60 years ago, sparked global headlines over the weekend. But it isn’t the only notorious closed-down jail or prison the administration has sought to repurpose for mass detentions.
The US government has in recent months pushed to reopen at least five other shuttered detention facilities and prisons, some closed amid concerns over safety and mistreatment of detainees. While California lawmakers swiftly dismissed the Alcatraz announcement as “not serious” and a distraction, the Trump administration’s efforts to reopen other scandal-plagued facilities are well under way or already complete, in partnership with for-profit prison corporations.
A British company is producing mosquitoes that carry a ‘self-limiting’ gene that kills off female offspring, limiting the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever
In an unassuming building on an industrial estate outside Oxford, Michal Bilski sits in a windowless room with electric fly swatters and sticky tape on the wall, peering down a microscope. On the slide before him is a line of mosquito eggs that he collected less than an hour previously and put into position with a brush.
Bilski manoeuvres a small needle filled with a DNA concoction and uses it to pierce each egg and inject a tiny amount.
‘Wagatha Christie’ battle inches towards end, but judge told Vardy is still resisting payment of £300,000
The long-running legal feud between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy has inched closer to its end, with Vardy agreeing to pay almost £1.2m of Rooney’s legal costs.
But the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel battle is not yet finished, a judge has been told, with Vardy still resisting payment of a further £300,000.
California governor Gavin Newsom announces a $7.5bn tax incentive scheme as Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on films ‘produced in foreign lands’ is mocked by Jimmy Kimmel and Fallon
Donald Trump appears to be softening his tone after widespread dismay in Hollywood and further afield at his bombshell announcement of 100% tariffs on films “produced in foreign lands”, saying he was “not looking to hurt the industry”.
In remarks reported by CNBC, Trump said he was planning to discuss the plan with film industry leaders. “I’m not looking to hurt the industry, I want to help the industry.”
Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.
The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.
The Trump administration’s funding cuts to the NIH could destroy a wave of approaching research breakthroughs
Since Robert F Kennedy Jr assumed control of the US health department in February, with a mandate to “[lower] chronic disease rates and [end] childhood chronic disease”, he has moved quickly to remake the US’s federal health infrastructure. But the Trump administration’s actions on medical research are already threatening that goal – and could end medical progress in this country for good.
Kennedy’s office oversees the National Institutes of Health, the control center of disease research in the United States. Kennedy’s agency has killed almost 800 active projects, according to Nature, affecting medical research into HIV/Aids, diabetes, women’s health, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and more. The administration wants to cut the NIH’s budget up to 40% while consolidating its 27 agencies – separated by disease area – into just eight. Elon Musk’s Doge has been reviewing previously awarded grant funding, reportedly requiring researchers to explain how they are using their grants to advance the Trump administration’s political goals. (Audio obtained by the Washington Post suggests this “Defend the Spend” initiative may be a smokescreen, with one NIH official admitting: “All funding is on hold.”) Separately, Donald Trump has aggressively targeted universities such as Harvard and Columbia over alleged antisemitism and diversity initiatives, using federal contracts that fund research as leverage. And just recently, the NIH passed a new rule banning any university from receiving future federal grants if the universities use DEI programs or boycott Israeli firms.
With tipping reported at self-checkouts, drive-throughs and even vending machines, some consumers are pushing back
When Garrett Petters, a 29-year-old architect in Dallas, and his girlfriend travelled to Paris last year, one of their favourite parts was eating out. They enjoyed French duck, andouillette, plenty of bread, cheese and coffee and even escargot.
But it wasn’t just Paris’s cuisine they admired. It was also the different tipping culture. “We were talking about how nice it is in Europe that they pay their waiters and waitresses and we don’t have to tip because of it, and isn’t that cool,” Petters said. It felt very different from back in the US, where tipping culture felt “out of control”.
After two performances were cancelled over threats linked to protests against Israel, the duo said the actions were ‘self-evidently a method of censorship’
After the cancellation of two UK performances with the Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has said that they “dread the weaponisation of this cancellation by reactionary figures as much as we lament its celebration by some progressives”.
In a statement, Greenwood and Tassa said that venues in London and Bristol as well as “their blameless staff” had received enough credible threats to conclude that it was not safe to proceed with the gigs.
Owen Jenner and Shane Richardson died at Oulton Park
Fellow riders pay tribute on ‘black day for motor sport’
Police have launched an investigation into the deaths of two motorcyclists who were killed in a crash involving 11 riders during a British Superbikes event on Monday. Owen Jenner, 21, and Shane Richardson, 29, sustained fatal injuries after a pile-up at the first corner of the race at Oulton Park in Cheshire.
Jenner, from Crowborough in East Sussex, was treated at trackside but died of a head injury despite further resuscitation treatment at the circuit’s medical centre. Richardson, from Wainuiomata in New Zealand, was also treated at the course before being transferred to Royal Stoke University Hospital with severe chest injuries. He died before arrival.
Head coach must decide if his son commands a place, the back-row blend and whether a left-field pick is required
As Andy Farrell prepares to name his British & Irish Lions touring squad it is worth reflecting on the events of 12 years ago. Then as now, the destination was Australia and Farrell was an important cog in Warren Gatland’s management team. It was also the last time the Lions actually won a series, the solitary occasion they have ticked that illustrious box this century.
And do you remember who, ultimately, made the difference in the all-important final Test in Sydney, with the best-of-three series poised at 1-1? None other than the strong-scrummaging Alex Corbisiero, who had been omitted from the original squad and owed his presence to an ankle injury sustained by Ireland’s Cian Healy early in the tour.
El Salvador’s populist leader extols a hardline approach to crime and an assault on civil society – drawing envy from many in the Trump administration
“I have no doubt the government are watching,” said Ingrid Escobar, an activist lawyer who has proved a thorn in the side of El Salvador’s authorities. “There are cars that follow me – I have them identified.”
Since president Nayib Bukele launched a sweeping crackdown on gangs, Escobar has advocated for the tens of thousands locked up without due process. She points to a photo of Geovanni Aguirre, a childhood friend and trade unionist who worked in San Salvador’s mayor’s office. He disappeared into the prison system in 2022.
Paul Haggis’s interconnected drama about racism in Los Angeles remains one of the most embarrassing Oscar decisions ever made
It doesn’t take long for Paul Haggis’s Crash to end up on the shortest of shortlists for the worst film ever to win best picture at the Oscars, maybe the single worst in the color era since 1954’s Around the World in 80 Days. At the time, it was a dark-horse favorite to upset the widely acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, premiering a full year earlier at the Toronto film festival before riding an unexpected cultural wave to awards-season glory. Now 20 years later, it feels like a “you had to be there” moment that’s hard to explain, because the movie itself is so obviously rancid that it suggests few answers on its own. The job is probably better suited to cultural anthropologists than film critics.
Nonetheless, Haggis’s ensemble piece about racial animus in Los Angeles seems to have struck a chord with, well, the many Academy voters from Los Angeles who reside in that lumpy melting pot. Haggis was also capitalizing on the everything-is-connected trend in arthouse screenwriting, pulling off a clunkier version of the narrative engineering that brought films such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros to life. By linking a little over a day’s worth of incidents together, Haggis seized on the potentially powerful idea of racism as a viral scourge in the city, infecting everyone it touches. Instead it plays like a po-faced cover of the Avenue Q hit Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.
Hamas has said it is no longer interested in truce talks with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza, hours after Israeli officials agreed an intensified offensive in the devastated territory that would involve displacing “most” of its residents and a sustained Israeli military presence.
“There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip,” Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told AFP.
First they had to give birth in custody, then their babies were taken away. Sometimes they never got them back. Here’s what 29 women told the Lost Mothers Project
One by one, 29 women sat before Dr Laura Abbott in similarly small, nondescript rooms across five UK prisons, and described losing their babies. They were not bereaved in the conventional sense – although they were clearly holding in grief, as once the guards had left, they let rare public tears fall. Prisoners who had given birth in custody, they had been separated from their newborn children. In some cases this had happened within four or five days of becoming mothers.
“It was worse than giving birth,” said one woman. “That was the hardest pain of my life. I’ve never felt pain like it … It was in my chest, in my heart. Even in my belly.”
As Israel’s aid blockade continues and humanitarian zones disappear, there is talk of a ‘second Nakba’ being realised
Like so many others across the Gaza Strip, Khalil al-Hakimi felt a weight lift from his shoulders for the first time in over a year when Israel and Hamas agreed a long-delayed ceasefire in January.
He cried and hugged his five children tightly. “I slept deeply, free from the sound of bombing, destruction and death,” he said.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer won final grand slam titles at the same age. The odds of beating that mark seem long, but the Serbian has always been ruthlessly determined
On a clear September New York evening in 1981, following a soul crushing loss to John McEnroe in the US Open final for the second consecutive year, Björn Borg disappeared into the night and vanished from the sport. He was only 25. He had accumulated an extraordinary 11 grand slam titles by then, but it left one to wonder how many more championships he could have amassed had he not retired so young. His conqueror that day had a much longer career and played until he was 33. But McEnroe, like Borg, won his last grand slam singles title at 25.
Back in those old days of the first phase of Open tennis (which I’ll date from 1968-1985; most of the top pros didn’t start playing the Australian Open regularly until the mid-1980s), players reached their peaks in their mid-20s and winning majors as one approached 30 was considered unusual.
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, was due to meet with the US president, Donald Trump, on Tuesday in a closely watched encounter at the White House that could hint at the future relationship between the two countries and their two leaders.
Over the weekend, Trump said it was “highly unlikely” he would use military force to annex Canada, a key trading partner and political ally. In recent months, the president has repeatedly threatened to use economic coercion to weaken Canada to the point that it accedes to Trump’s wish to make it the 51st state.
Because of the blockade, hunger is part of our daily reality now. It is deep and cruel, and there is no relief
It has been more than 30 hours since I last ate. At times, I go as long as two days without food. For most people around the world, the word hunger is a fleeting feeling, easily fixed with a trip to the kitchen or a nearby store. Saying “I’m hungry” is routine, almost meaningless. But imagine if every time you felt hungry, there was nothing to eat – no food, no relief, just emptiness. This has been my daily reality in the Gaza Strip for over a month.
Since the beginning of the war, the Israeli occupation has controlled the quantity and type of food allowed into Gaza. When a ceasefire was agreed, I hoped that everything I had endured was behind me. I held on to the hope of a better life, convinced that hunger would become something in my past. But just as I began to regain my health, the bombing and destruction returned – and with them, the starvation.
Spanish club want to bring forward right-back’s transfer
Madrid play at tournament before his contract ends
Real Madrid have approached Liverpool in an attempt to bring forward the signing of Trent Alexander-Arnold so that he is available to play in the Club World Cup, which starts on 14 June in the United States. The right-back is set to join the Spanish side when his contract expires at the end of June but Madrid are eager to take him earlier.
Any agreement would lead to Liverpool receiving a fee. Fifa has implemented a two-window summer to benefit those playing at the Club World Cup, with the first lasting from 1 to 10 June and the second opening on 16 June. Madrid’s first fixture is on 18 June against Al-Hilal at the Hard Rock Cafe Stadium in Miami.
The US president’s bizarre talk of 100% levies on films from ‘foreign lands’ combines trolling with a hazy grasp of facts
Another day, another bizarre, mischievous, headline-hogging pronouncement from the US president.
Steve Bannon famously advised him to flood the zone with shit – a Maga-Maoist permanent revolution of provocative, toxic nonsense. Trump is flooding the zone with tariffs, then he pauses, walks back and climbs down on tariffs, and then adds more tariffs. The latest is his bizarre plan to hit movies made in “foreign lands” with 100% tariffs. He has solemnly announced his grave concern that Hollywood was “dying” at the hands of foreigners like the UK, who give tax breaks to multinationals.
Bezalel Smotrich tells gathering at West Bank settlement that Palestinians ‘will start to leave in great numbers to third countries’
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said Beijing is “highly concerned about the current Palestine-Israel situation”.
“We oppose Israel’s ongoing military actions in Gaza, and hopes all parties continuously and effectively implement the ceasefire agreement,” Jian said.
The government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopes that the Israel Defense Forces’ call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, the threat of the new offensive and the prospect of Israel seizing swaths of territory will force Hamas’s leaders to make concessions.
If it fails to do so, then physical possession of terrain will offer useful leverage in future negotiations and allow Hamas to be squeezed further in the meantime…
Barbie maker Mattel has said it will increase prices for some products in the US in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs while carmaker Ford said the US president’s measures would cost it about $1.5bn (£1.1bn) this year.
The US represents about half of Mattel’s global toy sales, and the company imports about 20% of its goods sold in the country from China. Mattel said it would reduce imports into the US from China to below 15% by 2026.
A mixed-race musician is drawn into the unfamiliar milieu of an upper-class family in this plotty debut
The unnamed narrator of William Rayfet Hunter’s debut novel, a mixed-race aspiring musician from Manchester, is plunged into an unfamiliar milieu when his posh university friend, Lily, invites him to spend a summer at her parents’ chateau in the French countryside. There’s an undercurrent of unease – at one point he is mistaken for staff – but the family are welcoming. Lily’s bisexual brother, Felix, a handsome actor and enfant terrible who has just emerged from a stint in the Priory, is especially friendly. A relationship develops, which brings perks for the narrator: Felix’s father gives him a cushy job at his property firm, and his mother promises to pull strings and get him an audition with the Royal Academy. It all seems too good to last – and so it proves.
Sunstruck is a story about identity and belonging. The protagonist had hung out with goth kids at school; his black best friend, Jasmine, teasingly nicknames him “WhiteBoy” because he is so out of touch with black pop culture. But when the action moves to London in the second half of the novel, and particularly after a black friend of Jasmine’s is badly beaten up by police at the Notting Hill carnival, a racial consciousness gradually awakens within him. He suspects that he’ll never be truly accepted in Felix’s world, and their relationship is troublingly imbalanced. Yet he can’t quite tear himself away: “The intoxicating sense of belonging, of moving through a space I didn’t know existed … this is something I cannot give up.”
Documentary investigates the whereabouts of the model who played an influential corporate character, as well as the relationship between race and technology
Back when computers were still new, Mavis Beacon was an icon for generations of children learning IT skills. Her name, along with the accompanying image of a smiling, suited Black woman, graced countless editions of some popular software that taught typing through interactive lessons and games. For Black students, to see someone who looked like them in a position of authority and knowledge, inspired assurance and aspiration. Mavis Beacon, however, did not exist; she was a fictional character represented by a photograph of Renée L’Espérance, a Haitian model whose story is now lost to history. Eager to reclaim her legacy, film-maker Jazmin Jones and collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross embarked on a years-long quest to track down the woman behind the image.
The resulting documentary is anything but conventional. Describing themselves as “E-girl detectives”, Jones and Ross draw on a wide variety of sources for their investigation. In addition to a physical headquarters – complete with an evidence board not unlike those seen in detective films of yore – there is a virtual dimension to their pursuit. We see what presumably is the cybersleuths’ desktop screen, on which memes, Google maps and search results multiply like mushrooms after the rain.
Connexion
