Aimee Betro, 45, was found guilty of conspiracy to murder earlier this month after a two-week trial
An American “hitwoman” who attempted to murder a business owner before going on the run in Armenia has been jailed for 30 years at Birmingham crown court.
Earlier this month, Aimee Betro, 45, from Wisconsin was found guilty of conspiracy to murder, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and an offence relating to the importation of ammunition into the UK, after a three-week trial.
No show has ever worked harder to have its finger on the nation’s pulse than Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s long-running comedy – and it really shows
Early on in its 27th season, South Park has garnered more controversy than it has in years (possibly ever), along with some of its highest ratings.
Last week’s episode took aim at the Trump administration’s brutal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids, poked fun at secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s penchant for puppy murder and cosmetic surgery (Noem has since climbed atop her moral high horse and accused the show of sexism), and of course, Donald Trump himself. Along with Trump’s martial takeover of Washington DC, this week’s instalment, titled Sickofancy, takes aim at artificial intelligence (specifically ChatGPT) and the larger tech-bro industry.
Rome tour guides call for attractions’ opening hours to be reviewed after death of Giovanna Maria Giammarino
Tour guides in Rome have repeated their calls for a rethink of the summer opening hours of some of the city’s biggest attractions after one of their colleagues died of a suspected heart attack while showing a group around the Colosseum in baking heat.
Giovanna Maria Giammarino, who was 56, collapsed in the amphitheatre at 6pm on Tuesday. Despite the efforts of tourists and the emergency services, she could not be revived and died at the scene.
Lawyer for Winnie Greco says cash for journalist was gesture of friendship and not an attempted bribe
A former longtime adviser to the mayor of New York City who resigned while under FBI scrutiny gave a reporter a potato chip bag filled with cash Wednesday after a campaign event.
A lawyer for Winnie Greco, the former adviser, insisted the cash was not an attempted bribe.
Women have been left fearful of childbirth after more than 80 attacks on maternity units since the invasion, leading to the world’s lowest birth rate and the highest mortality rate
It was one of the most horrifying targets of Russia’s war on Ukraine so far. Reports showed a pregnant woman on a stretcher, her face ashen with shock, legs smeared with blood and a hand holding her bump. Behind her, the bombed-out ruins of Mariupol’s maternity hospital. More than a dozen people, including women in labour, were injured in the attack in March 2022. The woman photographed, Iryna Kalinina, later died along with her unborn baby.
In the three years since then, maternity care in Ukraine has remained under constant attack, with more than 2,000 strikes on medical facilities, including 81 affecting maternal care and delivery rooms. Just last month, Diana Koshyk, seven months pregnant, was killed when a missile struck a maternity hospital in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
At 100 firms in S&P 500 with lowest median pay, executives’ comp increased by average of nearly 35% over five years
Some of the US’s lowest-paying large firms increased their CEOs’ compensation by an average of almost 35% over five years, according to new research. Their workers’ salaries did not keep up.
As executive remuneration ballooned, the average CEO-to-worker pay gap across the 100 companies in the S&P 500 with lowest median worker pay – dubbed the Low-Wage 100 by the Institute for Policy Studies – widened by 12.9% between 2019 and 2024, from 560 to 1 to 632 to 1.
Coco Gauff is once again the home favourite while this is Aryna Sabalenka’s last chance to win a grand slam this year
Aryna Sabalenka Is 2025 just not the world No 1’s year? Finishing as runner-up in Melbourne and Paris and falling in the semi-finals at Wimbledon, Sabalenka has failed to get over the line at slams this season despite being a constant favourite. But with her powerful game and a devastating serve – especially on hard courts – she has the tools to make a deep run as the defending champion in New York. The Belarusian has racked up a total of 52 weeks as the world No 1, surpassing her compatriot Victoria Azarenka’s 51 for the 13th-most weeks atop the WTA rankings since they began in 1975. Perhaps, like Roger Federer in 2008, the 27-year-old can triumph in the final slam of the year after making two finals and a semi.
Rereleased ahead of its forthcoming sequel, the classic mockumentary about the mythic pomp of a musical colossus on the decline is still a joy
This was the big bang moment for cringe comedy and spoof mockumentary, and it was an American classic whose every superb gag came to be savoured and replayed through its massive 1980s popularity on home video, securing for the and their international treasure status. Now it is rereleased in anticipation of the forthcoming sequel, prising open the chrysalis doors for the band to emerge once more into our lives.
The film is about the glorious nightmare of Britain’s heavy rock colossus Spinal Tap, and the horrendous contrast between their mythic pomp and their declining commercial prestige; it is a tragicomic and comically influential disconnect, flavoured with ironic self-awareness and poignant vulnerability. When lead vocalist David St Hubbins, secretly devastated by the thought of the band splitting up, says: “What does the end feel like? It’s like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how … what does that mean?”
It’s not about Nato or the Soviet Union. It’s about democracy
It may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin’s continuing war.
Much of the public analysis of the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, and the Washington collection of European leaders protecting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from the temperamental Trump, has been replete with red-herring issues. For example, Putin did not invade Ukraine because of feared Nato expansion. The unanimous consent of all Nato members required to admit Ukraine is nowhere on the horizon, especially since article 5 of the Nato treaty would require all Nato members to defend Ukraine from the ongoing Russian incursion.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His new book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane
Let me be the lone voice of reason: I do not want to turn on five lamps to achieve the amount of light the Big Light delivers
If there is one thing I have learned from a life lived on the internet, it is that being sent into a spiral of existential dread can come from the unlikeliest of places. And what could be more unlikely than wondering about the dire prospects of humankind through the prism of the Big Light? That’s right, the lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling, the main light, the one operated from the wall switch that you instinctively feel around for when you enter a room. If TikTok is to be believed, people around the world are saying “Down with the Big Light”, with videos that urge viewers never to use it and claim turning it on is a dating red flag garnering millions of views – all of which has left me wondering: truly, is nothing sacred?
I confess that defending the Big Light has long been a personal mission. My husband is a lamp guy. He values “mood”, whereas if I am unable to read a clothing care label or find a contact lens because it’s so dark, the only mood I find myself in is “fuming”. I don’t want to have to scuttle around a room turning on five lamps to achieve the amount of light the Big Light delivers. Even among our friends, the tide has turned, with one now openly trading in Big-Light falsehoods: “They are always just horrible blue lights beaming down on you, like you are being interrogated.”
Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK
When an influencer mocked the makeup of Turkish German women, the ensuing debate reopened old wounds
It all began when Meri, a TikTok influencer from Turkey, mocked the makeup of Turkish women living in Germany. They were, she claimed, instantly recognisable by their bronzer, thick blush, false eyelashes and plumped lips. And the look favoured by the diaspora, she added, waspishly, had “nothing to do with how real Turkish women look”.
Reaction from the diaspora was swift and stinging. “You’re just jealous because we live in Germany,” one said. “If we stop coming (to Turkey from Germany), your economy will collapse.” Soon a full-blown social media feud had erupted, with insults and mutual mockery flowing. And, although it started with makeup, the row has gone far deeper, exposing old and bitter rifts over gender, class, politics, nationalism and economic power.
Glaswegian teacher’s moan about the weather has racked up 4m views – and opened conversations about race on both sides of Atlantic
It began with a good-natured rant about the Scottish summer weather and has developed into a global conversation about history, diaspora and diversity on both sides of the Atlantic.
Last week, Torgi Squire uploaded a TikTok post that any Scottish parent could relate to: why is it, he asked, that without fail the washout summer weather always improves the week that the kids go back to school?
Midfielder on Martin Ho, taking steps forward with the London club and playing for Finland at Euro 2025
When Eveliina Summanen joined Tottenham from the Swedish side Kristianstad in January 2022, everything changed for her. The 27-year-old knew she was coming to a league with ambition, a league increasingly catching the attention of the best European talent, and a league that stood to benefit from a home European Championship that would catapult interest and growth further.
“At Spurs I got enough support and time to kind of grow into things,” Summanen says. “I wasn’t just thrown into the deep end right away. I got the right support, right help on and off the pitch to get to where I am now. It didn’t just happen overnight, I just slowly, slowly kept building and that’s still what I want to do, keep taking steps forward.”
This is an extract from our free email, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is back to its twice-weekly format, sent out every Tuesday and Thursday.
Amid US offering minimal security a group of allies led by Britain and France are putting together a military coalition
We have just heard from the European Commission, confirming that the EU and the US have now agreed on the much-awaited “joint statement” advancing the political commitments on trade agreed by Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump in Scotland last month.
The commission’s press release says the statement “lays out in detail the new US tariff regime towards the EU, with a clear maximum, all-inclusive, tariff rate of 15% for the vast majority of EU exports, including strategic sectors such as cars, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and lumber.”
Suspension of soy moratorium could open up area of rainforest the size of Portugal to destruction
One of the key agreements for Amazon rainforest protection – the soy moratorium – has been suspended by Brazilian authorities, potentially opening up an area the size of Portugal to destruction by farmers.
Coming less than three months before Brazil hosts the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, the news has shocked conservation groups, who say it is now more important than ever that consumers, supermarkets and traders stand up against Brazilian agribusiness groups that are using their growing political power to reverse past environmental gains.
African country’s foreign ministry says the two countries are working on the details of a deal over deportees
Uganda has reached an agreement with the US to take in deportees from third countries who may not get asylum, but are “reluctant” to go back to their own countries, according to Uganda’s foreign ministry.
Uganda won’t accept people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors under the temporary arrangement, the foreign ministry’s permanent secretary said in a statement. He did not say whether Uganda was receiving any payment or other benefits and how many deportees it would accept.
Jveuxdusoleil (I want sun) taps into a key part of Parisian culture: drinks on the terrasse, as many fear the extinction of the bistrot
In August, Paris is uncharacteristically quiet as hordes of residents scatter to the country’s beaches and coasts for a yearly month of vacation. Businesses close and the city nearly grinds to a halt. Among those who remain, there is an eternal, quintessentially Parisian quest: hunting for a balmy terrasse bathed in sunlight for an evening apéritif.
Finding the perfect seat on the pavement outside a cafe may be a matter of a chance stroll or a timely text from a friend. This summer, though, a digital solution has gained popularity in an extremely French instance of the old Apple slogan “there’s an app for that”: Jveuxdusoleil, an app that tracks the sun’s movement through the city’s maze of buildings to pinpoint exactly where you can claim a sunny spot on a terrace for your coffee. It arrives at a precarious moment for this particularly Parisian pursuit.
An estimated 1.2bn children are subject to this ‘harmful practice’ each year, affecting physical and mental wellbeing, report finds
The World Health Organization has declared corporal punishment a global public health concern that causes serious harm to children’s physical and mental wellbeing, and can lead to criminal behaviour.
A new report found that across 49 low- and middle-income countries, children exposed to corporal punishment – defined as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light” – were 24% less likely to be developmentally on track than children who were not.
Poor accessibility, questionable hygiene, scattered needles and budget cuts … the UK is in the midst of a public toilet crisis. Thankfully, Raymond Martin is fighting back
The first thing Raymond Martin looks for in a toilet, he says, is cleanliness. Does the tissue paper on the floor mean this public lavatory has failed his inspection? “You have to understand that it’s a working toilet, it’s now mid-afternoon – a few bits of tissue on the floor is neither here nor there,” Martin says. “If there were cigarette packets, bottles on the floor – that I’d be worried about.” We’re in Knutsford, Cheshire, and Martin is on a toilet-inspection tour of the north and west of the UK. He’s just come from the Lake District and Blackpool. When we part ways in a couple of hours, he’ll head on to Wales to inspect the public conveniences of Pembrokeshire.
Do people laugh when Martin, who is managing director of the British Toilet Association (BTA), tells them he does toilet inspections? They do, he says. “But then, immediately, they say, ‘I’ll tell you where I was and they had wonderful toilets …’.”
A love letter to the dwindling world of traditional manual labour – from bodgers to snobs
Britain, says James Fox, was once a place teeming with bodgers, badgers, ballers, bag women, bottom stainers, fat boys, flashers and flirters. That’s not forgetting the riddlers, slaggers and snobs. And before you say anything, these are all occupations that were once ubiquitous but are now vanishingly rare: a bodger makes chair legs; a badger is someone who etches glass; a fat boy is a greaser of axles in haulage systems, while a snob is a journeyman maker of boots and shoes.
According to the main charity that supports traditional skills, 285 crafts are still practised in Britain, of which more than half are endangered. Seventy-two are on the critical list and it is these, and the people who practise them, that James Fox sets out to record. He meets the Nobles, who are the pre-eminent stone-walling family “in Britain, if not the world”. Mostly they stick close to home, in the West Yorkshire village where they have farmed, and walled, for centuries. Building a dry-stone wall requires an extraordinary kind of embodied knowledge, the sort that knows instinctively how to use gravity, friction and exactly the right-shaped rock to build a structure that allows moorland gales to whistle through and remain standing. Done right, a dry-stone wall will last 200 years, compared with a post-and-wire fence which needs replacing after 20.
With its rousing card game about activism, indie studio Speculative Agency hopes to inspire players to engage with issues such as pollution and the climate crisis
The demo of All Will Rise begins with a win for lawyer Kuyili. She has just successfully argued in front of a court that a river running through the fictional version of the Indian city of Muziris should have the same rights as a person. According to Kuyili, this has precedent – after all, companies can argue in court similarly to individual people.
The excitement over this historic win doesn’t last long as, soon after, the river is polluted by a large oil spill, which catches fire, the toxic smoke enveloping several neighbourhoods. Pollution on this scale has devastating effects, so Kuyili and her colleagues begin investigating.
(Biophilia Records) Ambrose Akinmusire and Tyshawn Sorey join the bassist-composer on originals featuring top-end squeals, bass flurries and a guilelessly delicate highlight
The power of three has had a great press for a long time, embedded as it’s been in the tenets of Christians, witches, Buddhists, or just the beginnings, middles and ends of fireside stories. And in the thrifty music-making years after the second world war, the economical appeal of the jazz trio – often led by piano virtuosi such as Bill Evans or Ahmad Jamal, occasionally by such sax giants as Sonny Rollins – also revealed just how much spontaneous creativity could fly from minimal gatherings.
Linda May Han Oh, the Malaysia-born, New York-based Australian bassist and composer whose star employers have included Vijay Iyer and Pat Metheny, leads this standout example, composing everything except for covers of Geri Allen and Melba Liston tunes. Her trio partners are those stellar inventors of contemporary jazz, Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums).
With Leverkusen and Dortmund in transition after losing key players, the stage is set for champions to reign again
The newly named Franz Beckenbauer Supercup has many uses. Unlike some of its continental counterparts, this curtain-raising meeting between league and cup winners tends to brim with a pleasing intensity. It unfolds in a partisan atmosphere too, taking place at one of the two competitors’ stadium rather than at a neutral venue, so we feel the real straight away.
Telling us what to expect for the coming nine months in the Bundesliga, however, isn’t often one of the Supercup’s strengths. Bayer Leverkusen gave a faithful impression of their double-winning form in emerging victorious in last year’s edition by punking Stuttgart with a late Patrik Schick goal before winning on penalties, having played a huge chunk of the match with 10 men. The year before, Harry Kane made an inauspicious Bayern Munich debut at the end of “a crazy 24 hours”, entering the field to tumultuous acclaim only for his new team to subsequently be flattened by Dani Olmo’s hat-trick for Leipzig. Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, never won it in his three years at Bayern.
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