Ben Youngs, Owen Farrell and Jamie George do not feature in England’s squad to face Wales in one of four upcoming World Cup warm-up friendlies, with Danny Care returning to the line-up having been omitted by Eddie Jones at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Last Updated: 03/08/23 12:06pm
Danny Care returns for England
Danny Care returns at scrum-half while Ellis Genge captains England as they take on Wales in Saturday’s World Cup warm-up match in Cardiff.
Care lines up next to Harlequins team-mate Marcus Smith with Ben Youngs, Owen Farrell and Jamie George not featured in the squad as head coach Steve Borthwick selects an experimental side amid World Cup preparations.
Loosehead prop Genge will lead England out as captain alongside hooker Jamie Blamire and tighthead prop Will Stuart on the front row for what will make the first of four friendlies ahead of France in September.
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England attack coach Richard Wigglesworth says the International friendly against Wales on Saturday is not a final audition for the Rugby World Cup.
England attack coach Richard Wigglesworth says the International friendly against Wales on Saturday is not a final audition for the Rugby World Cup.
Davin Ribbans of Toulon plays alongside the Leicester Tigers’ George Martin in the second row, while Tom Pearson partners Northampton Saints team-mate Lewis Ludlam as the two flankers and Alex Dombrandt plays at No 8.
Leicester’s Guy Porter and Joe Marchant of Stade Francais start in midfield, while Joe Cokanasiga of Bath and Max Malins of Bristol line up on either wing with Freddie Steward at fullback.
“England versus Wales in Cardiff is always an exciting and keenly contested fixture,” said England coach Steve Borthwick.
“I am sure this Saturday will be no different as a tremendous first Test match of the Summer Nations Series.
“We have been impressed with how the whole squad has applied itself both on and off the field over this training camp. We are now looking forward to returning to Test match rugby as we continue our preparations for the Rugby World Cup in France.”
LONDON — Britain’s largest mobile and broadband supplier BT Group on Monday appointed Allison Kirkby to replace Philip Jansen as chief executive, saying the switch would take place toward the end of January 2024 at the latest.
Kirby has previously served as president and CEO of Swedish telecoms provider Telia, with experience at Virgin Media and Denmark’s TDC. She has been a member of the BT Group board for the past four years.
“I’m fully supportive of our strategy and am excited about leading it into its next phase of development, as we grow to support customers, shareholders and the U.K. economy,” Kirby said.
Jansen earlier this month announced he would step down from his role within the next 12 months. He will remain on hand to support the handover until March 2024 before retiring, BT said Monday.
His legacy includes BT’s push to build a national fibre network, offering discounted wholesale fibre pricing to major broadband providers in exchange for shifting customers to the grid. U.K. telecoms regulator Ofcom in May ruled that BT subsidiary Openreach’s Equinox 2 wholesale pricing scheme was allowed.
“Based on the evidence available to us, we don’t consider Openreach’s new pricing discounts to be anti-competitive,” Ofcom said at the time.
“Openreach is now 44% of the way through its full fibre build, and customer demand has continued to grow with a total network take-up rate of 32%,” BT said on Thursday, during its quarterly earnings release for the three-month period to 30 June. It also declared adjusted EBITDA up 5% to £2 billion ($ 2.57 billion), with pre-tax profit of £536 million, up 11%.
London — In the heart of the English countryside, a multimillion-dollar set of the mythical land of Oz — complete with the thatched roof houses of Munchkinland, and a yellow brick road to boot — lies empty.
Production on the set of “Wicked” — a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, and starring Ariana Grande — has shut down in the U.K. for the foreseeable future, as the effects of the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes are being felt far beyond Hollywood.
London is the third largest center for movie production in the world. Major productions being shot in England’s capital, like “Wicked” and the Walt Disney-produced “Deadpool 3,” have paused all production until further notice.
While U.K. labor laws prevent Equity — the British performing arts and entertainment trade union — from striking with Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America, actors and writers in the U.K. have been marching in solidarity with their U.S. colleagues.
Comedian Rob Delaney, a SAG-AFTRA member and one of the stars of “Deadpool 3,” told CBS News at a solidarity march in Leicester Square last week that the strikes are necessary to make large Hollywood studios care about “quality and quantity.”
“They’re like toddlers,” Delaney said of the studios. “They say ‘look at all the money’ and then we ask for a nickel…and they’re like, ‘No we don’t have it.’”
A member of the Equity, the British performing arts and entertainment trade union, speaks during a rally in London’s Leicester Square to show their solidarity with the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in the U.S. Along with the Labour MP John McDonnell, many famous British actresses and actors attended the demonstration, including Rob Delaney, Andy Serkis, David Oyelowo, Hayley Atwell, Brian Cox, Simon Pegg, Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter.
Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“I’d rather be on set today, but today’s job is to be here making sure that people less fortunate than me get paid properly,” he added.
“Succession” star Brian Cox, also in attendance at the London rally, told CBS News that writers are the lifeblood of the industry.
“You couldn’t have a show like ‘Succession,’ with as many Emmy nominations as we’ve had, without great writing,” he said. “It’s nonsense to think that you can circumvent writers, you can’t. They’re the basis of what we do.”
Many film and television workers in Britain say that the best outcome for the industry globally is for SAG- AFTRA and the WGA to get the terms that they want.
“The idea of being like the Hollywood film industry, or a Hollywood stunt person, is kind of almost like an outdated kind of myth now,” British stuntman James Cox told CBS News earlier this week. “Because now, such a large chunk of the work is here in the U.K.”
Cox warned that the economic impact in the short term will be severe for peers in his profession.
“It’s the unknown element, which is probably the most distressing for most of the performers,” he said. “To say, ‘Now you guys are unemployed, we don’t know how long for,’ there’s going to be kind of stresses and strains across the whole hierarchy of the film industry.”
Among the sticking points for writers and actors in the U.S. is the decline in residuals from film and television work due to the growing market dominance of streaming platforms such as Netflix. Another major issue has been the use of artificial intelligence, which British performers say also poses a threat to the livelihoods of film crews globally.
“AI as a creative tool, is worrying because…it can’t really create anything,” actor Simon Pegg told CBS News at Equity’s SAG-AFTRA solidarity rally last week.
“Only we can do that,” he added. “So to rely on it is to rely on mediocrity, and we can’t do that.”
For James Cox, AI threatens the fundamental value of movie making. He says audiences could lose the magic of cinema.
“That’s ultimately, probably, the question at the crux of the AI issue,” Cox said. “What do the people want to see? Do they want to see something human, or something distinctly unhuman?”
The approximately 11,000 members of the WGA have been on strike since early May, while SAG-AFTRA joined them on the picket lines in mid-July. Of SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 total members, about 65,000 film and television actors are on strike.
The two unions are negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents all major Hollywood studios, including Paramount Pictures, which along with CBS News is part of Paramount Global.
It announced a new rate increase of a quarter percentage point, bringing its main rate to 3.75%, completing a full year of consecutive rate hikes in the euro zone.
“Inflation continues to decline but is still expected to remain too high for too long,” the ECB said Thursday in a statement.
Sinéad O’Connor‘s death at her London home “is not being treated as suspicious,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement Thursday. The statement did not name O’Connor — a legendary Irish singer-songwriter known best for her hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” — in line with U.K. police protocols.
The London police’s statement said “a 56-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene” at a south London residence Wednesday by officers responding to reports of “an unresponsive woman.”
“A file will be prepared for the Coroner,” the statement added.
O’Connor’s family announced her death Wednesday “with great sadness.”
Sinéad O’Connor is seen onstage, March 4, 1988.
Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection
“Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time,” they said in a statement.
Many around the world took to social media following news of her death to share tributes to the artist. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis dedicated a post on Instagram to O’Connor, recognizing the artist’s “beautiful” voice and “brilliant” personality. Singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge called O’Connor’s death “a tragedy,” and rapper Ice T offered his “respect to Sinead.”
O’Connor overcame a difficult childhood to achieve her first major musical success in the late 1980s with her debut album “The Lion and the Cobra.” But it was her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” that made her a household name.
She won one Grammy, was nominated for the prestigious music award eight times and was named Rolling Stone’s artist of the year in 1991.
Along with her music, O’Connor was known for her outspoken stance on political and social issues, and was open about her struggles with mental health.
Her cause of death has not been revealed.
Simrin Singh contributed to this article.
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American actor Kevin Spacey was found not guilty Wednesday of all the sexual assault charges he was facing in a U.K. trial. The actor had faced nine sexual offense charges related to incidents reported by four men that allegedly took place between 2001 and 2013.
The Academy Award-winning actor had pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Spacey, 64, was acquitted in London’s Southwark Crown Court of charges including sexual assault, causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity.
Actor Kevin Spacey leaves Southwark Crown Court after he was found not guilty on charges related to allegations of sexual offenses, in London, July 26, 2023.
Reuters/Susannah Ireland
All four of the alleged victims — who can’t be named under U.K. law — testified during the trial, as did Spacey himself, who said he was crushed by the allegations.
In their testimony, the four men described Spacey a “sexual bully” and a predator.
Spacey starred in the Netflix series “House of Cards” until he was fired in 2017 after fellow actor Anthony Rapp accused him of prior sexual misconduct. A civil jury in Massachusetts later found him not liable on those allegations.
Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend has handed uncapped pair Stafford McDowell and Cameron Henderson an opportunity to impress after naming an experimental team to face Italy in Saturday’s Rugby World Cup warm-up clash; Rory Darge captains the hosts in the match at Murrayfield
Last Updated: 26/07/23 12:04pm
Stafford McDowall has been named in Scotland’s starting line-up against Italy
Stafford McDowall and Cameron Henderson are set to make their Scotland debuts in their country’s first World Cup warm-up match at home to Italy on Saturday.
Head coach Gregor Townsend has named an experimental starting XV and replacements bench, with very few of his senior players involved as he runs the rule over his squad before finalising his 33-player group for the showpiece tournament in France in the coming weeks.
Glasgow Warriors centre McDowall starts in the midfield alongside Chris Harris, while Leicester Tigers second row Henderson has been named among the replacements in a team which Rory Darge will captain for the first time.
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Outside centre Harris and scrum-half Ali Price are back in the starting line-up after losing their places for the Six Nations earlier this year.
Elsewhere, there is a welcome return for Darcy Graham as he starts on the wing after missing the Six Nations through injury.
The Edinburgh man’s new clubmate Ben Healy, who won his first cap during the Six Nations, will make his first start at fly-half
Glasgow full-back Ollie Smith, who won his third cap in the final Six Nations match against the Italians in March, gets another chance to stake a claim for the No 15 jersey following the recent retirement of Stuart Hogg.
Cameron Henderson is set to win his first Scotland cap off the replacements bench against Italy
In the pack, prop Rory Sutherland is back in the starting line-up while Murphy Walker will win his third cap.
Finn Russell, captain Jamie Ritchie, Grant Gilchrist, Huw Jones, Sione Tuipulotu, Richie Gray, Duhan Van Der Merwe, Pierre Schoeman, Zander Fagerson and Ben White are among several senior players who have been given the afternoon off.
Scotland have further World Cup warm-up matches against France, who they face home and away, and Georgia to come in August.
Townsend’s side then kick off their World Cup campaign against reigning champions South Africa in Marseille on September 10, with Ireland, Romania and Tonga providing their other opponents in Pool B.
Scotland team to face Italy
15 Ollie Smith, 14 Darcy Graham, 13 Chris Harris, 12 Stafford McDowall, 11 Kyle Steyn; 10 Ben Healy, 9 Ali Price; 1 Rory Sutherland, 2 George Turner, 3 Murphy Walker, 4 Sam Skinner, 5 Scott Cummings, 6 Luke Crosbie, 7 Rory Darge (captain), 8 Matt Fagerson.
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — There was a time — a year ago; six months ago, even — that Ons Jabeur might not have recovered from the deficit she found herself in during the Wimbledon semifinals. Down a set. Down a break in the second set. So close to being just a game from defeat.
She credits a sports psychologist with helping her understand how to deal with those on-court situations, with managing to keep her focus, keep her strokes on-target. Thanks in part to that, and a steadiness down the stretch at Centre Court on Thursday, Jabeur is on her way to a second consecutive final at the All England Club and her third title match in the past five Grand Slam tournaments.
Now she wants to win a trophy. The sixth-seeded Jabeur earned the right to play for one again by beating big-hitting Aryna Sabalenka 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3.
Ons Jabeur or Marketa Vondrousova will become a first-time Grand Slam champion when they play each other in the Wimbledon women’s final.
Daniil Medvedev had to skip the Wimbledon tournament last year but not because he wanted to. The 2021 U.S.
There’s no better way to escape the intense heatwave in Tunisia than to head inside and watch Wimbledon on TV when Ons Jabeur is playing.
Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz will meet in the Wimbledon final. Both won their semifinals in straight sets.
“I’m very proud of myself, because maybe old me would have lost the match today and went back home already. But I’m glad that I kept digging very deep and finding the strength,” said Jabeur, a 28-year-old from Tunisia who already was the only Arab woman and only North African woman to reach a major final.
“I’m learning to transform the bad energy into a good one,” Jabeur said, explaining that she was able to get over the anger she felt after the first set. “Some things I have no control over: She can ace any time. She can hit the big serve, even if I have a break point. That’s frustrating a bit. But I’m glad that I’m accepting it and I’m digging deep to just go and win this match — and, hopefully, this tournament.”
To do that, Jabeur will need to get past Marketa Vondrousova, a left-hander from the Czech Republic, on Saturday. Vondrousova became the first unseeded women’s finalist at Wimbledon since Billie Jean King in 1963 by eliminating Elina Svitolina 6-3, 6-3.
Like Jabeur, Vondrousova has been to a major final before. Like Jabeur, she’s never won one, having been the runner-up at the 2019 French Open as a teen.
“We’re both hungry,” Jabeur said.
So far, Jabeur is 0-2 in Slam finals. She lost to Elena Rybakina at the All England Club last July and to Iga Swiatek at the U.S. Open last September.
Jabeur’s win over No. 2 Sabalenka, the Australian Open champion in January, followed victories against three other major title winners: No. 3 Rybakina, No. 9 Petra Kvitova and Bianca Andreescu.
“I want to make my path worth it,” Jabeur said.
Thursday’s triumph, which came by collecting 10 of the last 13 games, prevented Sabalenka from replacing Swiatek at No. 1 in the rankings.
“I had so many opportunities,” said Sabalenka, a 25-year-old from Belarus who was not allowed to compete at Wimbledon last year because all players from her country and from Russia were banned over the war in Ukraine. “Overall, I didn’t play my best tennis today. It was just, like, a combo of everything. A little bit of nerves, a little bit of luck for her at some points.”
Jabeur trailed 4-2 in the second set when she began to turn things around. But not before Sabalenka came within a point from leading 5-3 after Jabeur put a forehand into the net and fell onto her back on the grass of Centre Court.
She dusted herself off and broke to take that game and begin the comeback. When she delivered a backhand return winner to force the match to a third set, Jabeur held her right index finger to her ear, then raised it and wagged it as she strutted to the changeover.
Sabalenka’s shots missed the mark repeatedly. She finished with far more unforced errors than Jabeur: The margins were 14-5 in the last set and 45-15 for the match.
“I was little bit emotionally down, then she was up,” said Sabalenka, who hit 10 aces but also double-faulted five times.
A break put Jabeur up 4-2 in the third, but there was still some work to be done. Sabalenka, as powerful a ball-striker as there is on tour, erased four match points before Jabeur converted her fifth with a 103 mph ace.
In the first semifinal, the 43rd-ranked Vondrousova reeled off seven consecutive games in one stretch against the 76th-ranked Svitolina, who returned from maternity leave just three months ago. After surprisingly beating Swiatek in the quarterfinals, she was trying to become the first woman from Ukraine to make it to the title match at a major tennis tournament.
Svitolina received loud support from thousands in the crowd at the main stadium — Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain was in the Royal Box — as applause and yells echoed off the closed roof.
Svitolina says she plays more calmly nowadays, something she attributed to the dual motivations of playing for her baby daughter, who was born in October, and of playing for her home country, where the ongoing war began in February 2022, when Russia invaded with help from Belarus.
“It’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of tension. I try to balance it as much as I can. Sometimes it gets maybe too much,” Svitolina said. “But I don’t want to (make it) an excuse.”
Vondrousova missed about six months last season because of two operations on her left wrist. She visited England last year with a cast on that arm to enjoy London as a tourist and to watch her best friend and doubles partner, Miriam Kolodziejova, try to qualify for Wimbledon.
“It’s not always easy to come back. You don’t know if you can play at this level and if you can be back at the top and back at these tournaments,” Vondrousova said. “I just feel like I’m just grateful to be on a court again, to play without pain.”
LONDON (AP) — A Romanian man who was part of an international human smuggling ring was sentenced Tuesday to more than 12 years in prison for the deaths of 39 migrants from Vietnam who suffocated in a truck trailer on their way to England in 2019.
Marius Mihai Draghici was the ringleader’s right-hand man and an “essential cog” in an operation that made huge profits exploiting people desperate to get to the U.K., Justice Neil Garnham said in the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey.
Victims, who paid about 13,000 pounds ($16,770) for so-called VIP service, died after trying in vain to punch a hole in the container with a metal pole as the temperature inside exceeded 100 degrees F (38.5 C). Their desperation as they struggled to breathe was captured in messages they tried to send loved ones and and recordings that showed “a growing recognition they were going to die there,” Garnham said.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are detained in a network of formal and informal prisons across Russia and the territories it occupies, where they endure routine torture, psychological abuse and even slave labor.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has stepped in to help revive a bill that would increase penalties for child trafficking. The bill by Republican state Sen.
Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is challenging the 20-year prison sentence he received after being convicted of masterminding the largest corruption scheme in state history.
The prosecutor’s office in Mississippi’s largest county says state Attorney General Lynn Fitch made a politically motivated decision to ask a state appeals court to overturn the conviction of a former police officer in the 2019 beating death of a man who died after being subdued during a traffic sto
There was no escape and no one could hear their cries, prosecutors said.
Their final hours “must have entailed unimaginable suffering and anguish,” prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones said Tuesday.
A young mother wrote a message to loved ones that was never sent: “Maybe going to die in the container. Cannot breathe any more.”
The 28 men, eight women and three children ranged in age from 15 to 44 and about half hailed from Nghe An province in north-central Vietnam. The victims included a bricklayer, a restaurant worker, a manicure technician, an aspiring beautician and a college graduate.
A married couple, Tran Hai Loc and Nguyen Thi Van, were found lying side by side Oct. 23, 2019, in the container that had been shipped by ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium to Purfleet, England.
Draghici, 50, pleaded guilty last month to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
He’s the fifth person to be sentenced in the case in the U.K. Four other gang members were imprisoned in 2021 for terms ranging from 13 to 27 years for manslaughter. The stiffest sentence went to ringleader Gheorghe Nica, 46.
Another 18 people were convicted in Belgium, where the Vietnamese ringleader was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Others got one- to 10-year prison terms.
Draghici was “shocked and horrified with what occurred,” defense lawyer Gillian Jones said in court.
But he, like the others involved in the conspiracy, had “immediately abandoned the plan and melted away in the night,” after another man opened the truck container and discovered the dead bodies, Emlyn Jones said.
Draghici and Nica both fled to Romania, where Draghici was later arrested.
Family members of the victims who had gone into debt to fund the travel said they were crushed by the loss.
The parents of Nguyen Huy Hung, 15, who was on his way to live with his parents in the U.K. and wanted to be a hairdresser, learned of the tragedy on social media.
“We did not believe it was the truth until we saw his body with our own eyes,” his father said. “We felt numb and that feeling lasted for many weeks later.”
London — President Biden was in London Monday morning for a whistlestop, 24-hour visit to the United Kingdom before heading for a NATO leaders summit in Lithuania. The first meeting on Mr. Biden’s agenda after his Sunday night arrival was a sit-down with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at his residence at No. 10 Downing Street. It was the president’s first in-person discussion with a fellow world leader on the European trip as the U.S. and its NATO allies look to maintain a unified voice in support of Ukraine as it battles Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Mr. Biden was heard saying as he walked into the British prime minister’s official residence that the U.S. has “no closer friend and greater ally” and that the relationship remained “rock solid.”
There has been concern in Europe over the Biden administration’s decision to send controversial weapons to Ukraine, but also over the future of U.S. government backing for Ukraine when Mr. Biden’s first term comes to an end. On both points, the U.S. leader will be looking to reassure America’s closest allies that Washington remains not only a committed partner but one that respects their humanitarian concerns.
Mr. Biden has spoken with Sunak a handful of times in recent months and their Monday meeting at Downing Street lasted only about 40 minutes.
It came after the U.S. announced its latest military aid package for Ukraine, which for the first time includes controversial cluster munitions. The move has divided U.S. allies, some of which — including the U.K. — have long banned use of the bombs.
Over the weekend, Sunak said the U.K. “discourages” the use of cluster munitions. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday, however, that NATO does not have a position on the weapons and that their use is not on the agenda for the summit that Mr. Biden will fly to join in Lithuania after his stop in London.
Another issue facing Mr. Biden and Sunak, and then the other NATO leaders this week, is Sweden’s pending accession to the transatlantic alliance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove the previously neutral countries of Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership. Finland has already become a full NATO member but Turkey and Hungary have so far blocked Sweden from joining.
President Biden shakes hands with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of their meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, July 10, 2023.
Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
Mr. Biden was expected to speak Monday with Sunak about conditions for a possible deal with Turkey to clear the way.
Ukraine also wants to join NATO, but allowing that to happen would infuriate Russia, likely draw sharp criticism from China and is a more contentious issue among the alliance’s existing members.
In an interview aired by CNN over the weekend, Mr. Biden said he didn’t think Ukraine was “ready for membership in NATO.”
“If the war is going on, then we’re all in a war,” he said, adding that there are other qualifications Ukraine must still meet to be considered for membership, including full “democratization.”
After his meeting with Sunak, Mr. Biden left central London for the roughly one-hour drive west, to have his first in-person meeting with King Charles III at Windsor Castle. Though not an official state visit, some classic British pomp and circumstance was organized for Mr. Biden’s stop at the ancient home of the British monarchy, including a guard of honor and a marching band.
Mr. Biden has met Charles on multiple occasions, but not since the king’s formal coronation ceremony on May 6. Mr. Biden did not attend the ceremony as he had just been in Britain for a separate trip, but first lady Jill Biden was there.
One of the two heads of states’ recent meetings was at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, in November 2021. On Monday, they were expected to discuss environmental issues and greet attendees from a climate finance forum that took place in the morning. Mr. Biden and Charles are expected to discuss with businesses leaders how private industry can best tackle climate change.
President Biden arrived in London on Sunday, where he will meet with the prime minister and King Charles III. The leaders will discuss a host of topics, including if Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO. Weijia Jiang reports.
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LONDON (Reuters) – Win or lose, Victoria Azarenka knew there would be no handshake offered by Ukrainian rival Elina Svitolina at the end of Sunday’s Wimbledon contest that had been billed as the ‘battle of the mums’.
What the Belarusian did not expect was to be booed off court after she had played her part in entertaining the Court One crowd for close to three hours in an exhilarating contest that needed a third-set match tiebreak to decide the winner.
A puzzled Azarenka was left bemused and shaking her head as she struggled to understand why the crowd had suddenly turned hostile on her.
After stopping in her tracks to face the jeering fans, she banged both fists together above her head and departed the arena with the boos still ringing around her ears.
Calling the reaction “unfair”, Azarenka did not want to make a big deal of it, realising that perhaps the crowd were not aware as to why she did not offer to shake hands with Svitolina at the end of the fourth round match.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Moscow using Belarus as a staging ground for what it calls a “special military operation”, Svitolina has stuck to her stance of not shaking hands with players from both countries.
Asked in a press conference if she felt that she was being victimised by the crowd, Azarenka snapped: “Victim? Victim that somebody didn’t shake my hand? Please. I think we’ve got bigger…
“I can’t control the crowd. I’m not sure that a lot of people were understanding what’s happening, so… It’s probably been a lot of Pimm’s throughout the day.”
No matter how harshly she felt done by the crowd, she refused to blame Svitolina for her predicament.
“I know Elina for a very long time. I’ve always had a good relationship with her. And the circumstances, it is what it is, and that’s it,” said Azarenka, who turned up for her press conference hiding her eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, but keep getting different treatment sometimes.
“She doesn’t want to shake hands with Russian, Belarusian people. I respected her decision. What should I have done? Stayed and waited?
“There’s no thing that I could do that would have been right, so I just did what I thought was respectful towards her decision. But this conversation about shaking hands is not a life-changing conversation.”
While it seemed everyone was only focussing on the events that unfolded after Svitolina had sealed her place in the last eight with an ace, Azarenka felt the on-court duel deserved more plaudits.
“I thought it was a great tennis match. If people are going to be focusing only on handshakes or crowd, quite drunk crowd, booing in the end, that’s a shame,” she said.
Svitolina thought such situations could be avoided if tournament organisers issued a statement to fans to make clear that “there will be no handshake between Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian players.”
“Some people do not really know what is happening. So I think this is the right way to do,” the Ukrainian said.
(Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Christian Radnedge)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts — outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house.
Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to “shake things up” at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings.
“I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV — and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.
KCCI-TV chief meteorologist Chris Gloninger stands outside his home, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. Gloninger has announced that he is leaving the Des Moines station due in part to threats he received for his coverage of climate change on air. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Gloninger’s experience is all too common among meteorologists across the country who are encountering reactions from viewers as they tie climate change to extreme temperatures, blizzards, tornadoes and floods in their local weather reports. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media.
Many meteorologists say it’s a reflection of a more hostile political landscape that has also affected workers in a variety of jobs previously seen as nonpartisan, including librarians, school board officials and election workers.
For several years now, Gloninger said, “beliefs are amplified more than truth and evidence-based science. And that is not a good situation to be in as a nation.”
Gloninger’s announcement sent reverberations through a national conference of broadcast meteorologists in Phoenix, where many shared their own horror stories, recalled Brad Colman, president of the American Meteorological Society.
“They say, ‘You should have seen this note.’ And they try to take it with a smile, a lighthearted laugh,” Colman said. “But some of them are really scary.”
Meteorologists have long been subjected to abuse, but that has intensified in recent years, said Sean Sublette, a former TV meteorologist and now the chief meteorologist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
“More than once, I’ve had people call me names or tell me I’m stupid or these kinds of harassing type things simply for sharing information that they didn’t want to hear,” he said.
A decade ago, far fewer TV meteorologists were talking about climate change on air, although they wanted to do so, said Edward Maibach, the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
The Weather Channel gave its first climate reporter, scientist Heidi Cullen, a dedicated show in 2006. She faced bitter and sexist resistance from some viewers, including conservative leaders, as she challenged other TV forecasters to address global warming in their reporting.
Climate Matters, a National Science Foundation-funded project, piloted in 2010 and fully launched in 2012 to support reporting on climate change by providing data analysis, graphics and other reporting materials.
Now TV meteorologists across the country report on climate change, though Maibach said they don’t always use those words. It is increasingly common to at least show its effects, he said, like highlighting the trend of more days in a year hitting temperatures above 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius).
Even if that kind of reporting resonates with most people, the criticism can be the loudest.
“If you stop reporting on relevant and important facts about what’s going on in your community because you’re hearing from the one out of 10, it means you are not serving the other nine out of 10,” Maibach said.
Some meteorologists have seen public interest in climate change grow even in largely red states as flooding, drought and other severe weather has ravaged farmland and homes. Jessica Hafner, chief meteorologist at Columbia, Missouri’s KMIZ-TV, said that with the exception of a few hecklers, she’s seen people respond well to data-based reporting because they want to know what’s going on around them.
Meteorologist Matt Serwe, who used to work in Nebraska, said the livelihoods of farmers who live there depend on the weather, so they take climate change seriously.
“You want to know how you can best succeed with these conditions,” he said. “Because at that point, it’s survival.”
It’s not just a problem in the United States. Meteorologists in Spain, France, Australia and the U.K. also have been subjected to complaints and harassment, said Jennie King, the London-based head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Some meteorologists don’t see harassment as a direct result of their reporting on climate change; it’s a pervasive issue in the industry and targets some more than others. TV reporters are more likely than reporters in other mediums to say they have been harassed or threatened, according to Pew Research Center polling in 2022.
The gaps between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidence in both the scientific community and the news media have been the widest in nearly five decades of polling by the General Society Survey, a long-standing trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. But confidence in both declined across the aisle last year.
“Science is under attack in this country,” said Chitra Kumar, managing director of Climate and Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts.”
Gloninger, 38, is moving back to Boston to care for aging parents, but he says he’s leaving Des Moines having realized that a small percentage of people who reject climate change make up an overwhelming percentage of the negative comments he has gotten.
KCCI-TV chief meteorologist Chris Gloninger stands outside his home, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. Gloninger has announced that he is leaving the Des Moines station due in part to threats he received for his coverage of climate change on air. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
“I know that now with the feedback that I’ve received after the fact, with hundreds of emails, dozens of handwritten letters,” he said of messages that have come from all over the state. KCCI-TV didn’t respond to request for comment.
“This incident is not representative of what Iowans are and what they believe,” Gloninger added. “At the end of the day, the people have been incredibly supportive — not just of me, but of the efforts that my station has made in covering climate.”
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Ballentine from Columbia, Missouri.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wane, popular European tourist destinations like London and Rome are seeing a large increase in American tourists. Chris Livesay has details.
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LONDON (AP) — One of Kevin Spacey ‘s accusers described the Oscar-winning actor in a London court Monday as a “slippery, snaky” predator whom good-looking young men were warned to avoid.
The man, who worked with Spacey when he came to the British capital’s Old Vic Theatre in the early 2000s, said the American actor offered to introduce him to Hollywood stars. But the man said the word around the playhouse was that he should be careful around Spacey.
“It was well known he was up to no good,” the man said in a video of his police interview played for jurors in Spacey’s sexual assault trial. “He was almost right from the get-go grooming me.”
An Afghan immigrant who’d worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan was shot and killed this week in the United States.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it will offer free tuition to some students in order to expand diversity efforts following last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions.
The Republican-controlled Legislature in Iowa will aim to enact a ban on abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy during a rare special session that starts Tuesday.
Maine’s top gambling regulator has been punished with a weeklong suspension without pay for tweets posted from his personal account about women and a white nationalist group.
The accuser, who cannot be identified under British law, is one of four men the former “House of Cards” star is accused of assaulting in the U.K.
He said Spacey made him uncomfortable querying him about his sexuality, then became “touchy-feely” and graduated to aggressive groping when they were alone together. He likened Spacey to the villain he played in the 1995 thriller “Se7en” about a serial killer motivated by the seven deadly sins.
“He’s a bit like that, a bit creepy,” the man said in his police interview last year.
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges for events that date from 2001 to 2013. The charges include sexual assault, indecent assault and causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
He could go to prison if convicted, though Spacey told a German magazine that he expects he’ll be offered work “the moment I am cleared of these charges.”
The trial, which is expected to last four weeks, continues Tuesday before a jury of nine men and three women in Southwark Crown Court.
Once one of the biggest actors of his generation, Spacey won an Academy Award for supporting actor in “The Usual Suspects” in 1995 and best actor Oscar for the 1999 movie “American Beauty.” He’s also won awards for the stage and small screen.
His career dried up when sexual misconduct allegations against him arose as the #MeToo movement exploded. He was written off the Netflix political thriller “House of Cards,” and cut from the completed film “All the Money in the World.”
The actor, who has homes in the U.S. and London, is free on bail. He served as artistic director at the Old Vic from 2003 until 2015.
The man who testified Monday said he reacted with horror when Spacey first made physical contact by rubbing his neck early in their work relationship in the early 2000s.
“The first time that he touched me was just a massive shock,” he said. “I just don’t like people’s hands on me.”
When he complained to a woman he worked for, she laughed it off and she said, “You can cope, you can handle it. We all know what he’s like,” he said.
The man said he decided he “didn’t want to upset the apple cart” and got on with his job.
But he said that as Spacey escalated to grabbing his crotch and taking his hand to rub the actor’s own privates over the pants, he began to dread when Spacey would return to London.
He described how Spacey would lean toward him while seated next to him and allow his hand to wander to his leg and then his inner thigh. At that moment in the testimony, Spacey was leaning on his right elbow in a similar manner as he listened from the courtroom dock.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Patrick Gibbs suggested the man, who was disguised in court behind a curtain, was confused by the touching and even got a thrill from it.
“Nothing happened between us. He was assaulting me,” the man replied. “I was doing my job and he was the one touching me.”’
Gibbs confronted the man with a photo he posted on social media six years ago in which his arm appears to be around Spacey’s back.
“Did it make you feel sick to stand there side by side?” Gibbs asked.
The man said he used the image to promote his business.
“Anyone who does social media would have killed for a picture like that,” he said.
He said the final straw came on a day he was driving Spacey to a celebrity-studded summer gala in 2004 or 2005. The star violently gripped his crotch and he nearly ran off the road, the man testified.
“He grabbed me really hard, and it really hurt,” he said. “I pushed him against the door and said, ‘Don’t do that again or I will knock you out.’”
“That’s such a turn on to me,” he said Spacey replied. “You’re such a man.”
Gibbs, however, said that Spacey only attended that gala once — three or four years earlier than the witness claimed.
The defense lawyer also showed jurors a snapshot the man had sent Spacey of himself as thanks for supporting him on a charity hike in the Rocky Mountains of North America. The man also kept a warm letter Spacey wrote him after donating 5,000-pound ($6,350) for the trek.
Spacey told police when he was questioned that he considered the man a “clever” and “charming” friend and was baffled and deeply hurt by his allegations. He suggested the man reimagined their time together to produce false allegations because he was either too embarrassed to admit the truth or seeking financial gain.
On cross-examination, the man said he may have considered suing Spacey but that whatever financial award he might win in court “wouldn’t be enough.”
The man said he told a few people in his life about his experience with Spacey, fearing it could affect his career. He said he decided to come forward last year after Spacey was charged with assaulting the three other alleged victims in the case.
“That’s a big part of it,” the man said. “Strength in numbers, isn’t it?”
“Or is it that in 2022, you saw a bandwagon coming past, and you decided to hop on board?” Gibbs asked.
“That’s not true at all,” the man said.
He said he never overcame the shame he felt from his encounters with Spacey and cannot bring himself to watch the actor’s films or TV shows.
“I can’t stand watching the man. It makes me feel sick,” he said.
SZA isn’t one to hold back from calling out toxic former flames in her tunes, and during a recent performance she did just that when she blasted her ex for allegedly cheating on her.
While performing at London’s O2 Arena earlier this week, the “I Hate U” singer opened up about her ex’s infidelity, which she admitted made it hard for her to enjoy London.
“It was terrible,” SZA continued. “That’s why I was really sad to come here, but you guys made it so much better. Thank you!”
“This song is about my other trash ex-boyfriend,” the 33-year-old then said as she transitioned to her hit song, “Nobody Gets Me.”
Speaking with Hot 97 last year, the “Kill Bill” crooner dished out details about the aforementioned track, revealing it was about her ex-fiancé and the disagreements they faced before finally calling it quits.
“This particular song in entirety is a story about my ex-fiancé and how we went through all these arguments, and we broke up,” she explained. “And when we first broke up, it was terrible, and I just felt like I was gonna be doomed to be in hell for the rest of my life because nobody understood me the way he did, and nobody motivated me the way he did.”
SZA added: “He was just this rock in my life that just no longer exists. The stories that I tell in that song about our arguments… That’s the theme on that. I feel like a lot of people don’t understand me, but it’s okay.”
London – Kevin Spacey’s trial began Wednesday in London, with the Hollywood actor facing charges of sexual assault, indecent assault and a more serious offense of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Spacey has pleaded not guilty to all of the 12 charges against him.
The 63-year-old arrived at London’s Southwark Crown Court and smiled and waved at media gathered outside the building as he waked in. The trial is expected to last four weeks.
Actor Kevin Spacey, right, arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London, England, June 28, 2023.
Dan Kitwood/Getty
Spacey has repeatedly denied the allegations made by four men who are now in their 30s and 40s over acts they accuse Spacey of committing during a 12-year period between 2001 and 2013. Some of the charges date back to a period when the actor was the artistic director at London’s Old Vic Theatre, a position he held for more than a decade before his departure in 2015.
The alleged victims cannot be identified under English law.
An internal 2017 investigation by the theater resulted in 20 anonymous claims of alleged inappropriate behavior by Spacey during his time as its artistic director.
The Oscar-winner’s “stardom and status at The Old Vic may have prevented people, and in particular junior staff or young actors, from feeling that they could speak up or raise a hand for help,” a statement from the Old Vic said at the time.
Spacey’s glittering Hollywood career largely came to an end in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp publicly accused him of sexual misconduct in a separate case, alleging that Spacey had targeted him when he was just 14 years old.
In October last year, a New York court dismissed a $40 million civil suit brought against Spacey by Rapp for alleged sexual misconduct dating back to the late 1980s. A judge had ruled separately that Rapp brought the case too late for criminal charges.
Charges of indecent assault and battery were also dropped against the actor in a separate case in Massachusetts in 2019, after a young man who had accused him declined to testify in the case.
In an interview earlier this month with German magazine Zeit, Spacey insisted that it was his work that “will be remembered,” and he expressed a desire to revive his career should he be cleared of the charges against him in the U.K.
“I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London. The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward,” Spacey said.
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Paul McCartney recently uncovered photographs he’d thought were lost – ones he took during The Beatles’ first tour of America in 1964. The pictures – candid shots from the vantage point of newly-anointed superstars – are the basis of a new book, “1964: Eyes of the Storm,” and an exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Correspondent Anthony Mason gets a private tour with McCartney, who talks about documenting the astonishing welcome that the “lads from Liverpool” received.
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European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is due to give a press conference following the bank’s latest monetary policy decision.
The bank announced that it was taking its main rate up by 25 basis points to 3.5%, diverging from a U.S. Federal Reserve decision to pause its own hikes on Wednesday.
