While local elections are complicated and give me the blues, the London race has big characters and bizarre real-world consequences

Local elections give me the blues. All political parties talk down their chances ahead of them, then a bunch of psephologists weigh in to describe what normal results look like at this stage in the electoral cycle, as if anything were normal nowadays. Local elections remind me of Emmerdale – not enough happens, but what does is way too complicated.

The London mayoral elections, on the other hand, unfold like a novel – a neatly bracketed timeline (they only started in 2000), with great big characters and the most bizarre, upside down consequences. No London mayor has enough power to solve the housing crisis, which is what all Londoners, renters at least, really think about; yet the office can bestow enough significance on an insignificant person that he can accrue the power to ravage the nation.

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Leading UK expert says loss of funding certain to damage attempts to tackle virus and variants

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Vital coronavirus research, including a project tracking variants in India, has had its funding reduced by up to 70% under swingeing cuts to the UK overseas aid budget.

One of Britain’s leading infectious disease experts said the UK government cuts were certain to damage attempts to tackle the virus and track new variants.

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This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

I’m so old I remember that the Oscars were this week.

Our distracted brains have moved onto other pressing matters in the circus of entertainment, such as Kourtney Kardashian making out with Travis Barker and why Zac Efron’s face look like that—admittedly ridiculous (though very real) preoccupations that have eclipsed any mainstream interest in what is supposed to be the most important and definitive event in the year of pop culture.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Those at the Lag B'Omer festival, where dozens died, say they were "swept along" by the crowd.

Officers attended domestic incident in Southport that ended in member of the public being beaten up

Four police officers have been convicted after one of them beat up a member of the public and the others helped him to cover it up.

The Merseyside police officers all attended a domestic incident in Southport in June 2019, which ended with a member of the public being assaulted.

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The Goop cruise is essentially a floating church freighted with expensive non-solutions. Yet there’s no shortage of believers

“If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” This was the reported opinion of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, who in 1967 bought the first in what was to become a fleet of cruise ships. According to various whistleblower accounts, longtime devotees were finally initiated into the innermost secrets of Scientology on board one of these vessels, having spent years passing through various confected levels and parting with incremental payments totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was where you found out about Xenu, among more weapons-grade lunacy, the galactic tyrant who 75bn years ago exiled multiple individuals to Earth in special craft that weirdly looked exactly like DC10s, then imprisoned them in mountains before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a huge 3D film. My theory has always been that they told you this stuff at sea to reinforce the notion that you were now in too deep to get off the boat, both literally and metaphorically.

So, yes: it’s no real surprise to learn this week that turbocapitalist fanny egg pedlar Gwyneth Paltrow has got into the cruise business. Face it, there’s never been a better time, with the possible exception of 13 minutes after the end of the Black Death.

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The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated problems for those working on Beijing’s signature influence-building program.

Football clubs, players and sporting bodies begin a four-day boycott of social media platforms to tackle abuse and discrimination.

A U.S. Air Force transport plane carrying oxygen cylinders, N95 masks and rapid diagnostic tests landed in Delhi on Friday, the first of several shipments pledged by the White House.

Queen only assumed role a month ago after death of her husband King Goodwill Zwelithini

Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, the traditional ruler of South Africa’s Zulu nation, has died aged 65, only a month after she took the role following the death of her husband, King Goodwill Zwelithini.

“It is with deepest shock and distress that the royal family announces the unexpected passing of Her Majesty Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, regent of the Zulu nation,” Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the founder of the Inkatha Freedom party and traditional prime minister to the Zulu monarch, said in a statement.

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Whether they admit it or not, Patrick Mahomes was baked into the decision-making process of every front-office executive during Thursday night’s first round

It’s hard to think of a single player in the modern era of the NFL that has had such an instant, sweeping and lasting impact as Patrick Mahomes. In the space of four short years, he has changed the entire tenor and tone of the league: conservatism is out; risk is in.

Make no mistake about it, though Thursday night’s first round of the NFL draft was all about crowning the league’s new batch of stars, it also served as confirmation of the Mahomesification of the league.

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Heaviest clashes in years between the two countries over disputed border leave 40 dead and 175 injured

A ceasefire on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan appeared to be holding on Friday after a day of intense fighting between the two former Soviet Central Asian neighbours that has killed about 40 people and wounded about 175.

More than 7,000 Kyrgyz people have been evacuated from the area engulfed by the fighting as troops from the two countries exchanged gunfire around a water supply facility near the village of Kok-Tash, in western Kyrgyzstan on the border with Tajikistan.

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I wonder what is so frightening to your middle-aged boyfriend about a woman looking like a woman, says Annalisa Barbieri. What does he look like?

I am a 30-year-old woman and for the past 10 years I’ve been in a relationship with a man 30 years older. I was much thinner when we first met and have since gained a little weight. My partner has started calling me fat, often pointing out that my hips are growing wider, that I eat too much, have a double chin, my stomach is flabby and so on.

When we met I was very conscious of my weight and I had low self-esteem about my looks. There was nothing wrong with my eating; I just weighed a bit less than the average. My partner encouraged me to have a more positive view, and it helped with my self-confidence. But since I started gaining weight a couple of years ago, he has been increasingly negative. I have told him it does not help that he calls me fat. He says he is not being disparaging, but wants to encourage me to exercise, lead a healthy lifestyle and eat moderately. He says I will be the one to suffer if I become fat because it will have an impact on my self-esteem and I will let myself go “like ugly middle-aged women with big thighs” (and I would not want to end up like that, would I?). He thinks he is telling me for my own sake as it will be bad for my mental health if I think I am fat.

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Dave Zirin

Human rights groups are concerned that using Rwanda as a backdrop would provide a public relations boost for its autocratic leader.

The post Voices Are Raised Against the NBA Launching Its New African League in Rwanda appeared first on The Nation.

Photo Illustration: Scouted/The Daily Beast/Vendors

Athletic wear has become mainstream, driven by staying at home for a year. From leggings to bike shorts to skorts (yes, skorts), these styles have been less about fitness and more about fashion. For months and months, I’ve been seeing tennis dresses everywhere. These aren’t your ‘90s polo dresses, made from thick, pique fabric and paired with pearls. No, these are exercise and workout dresses, made from athletic fabric, with a bodysuit underneath and they’re everywhere.

I wanted to see what the fuss was all about and if these dresses would give me the comfort and breathability for the summer that I crave, but with the coverage of workout clothes. So, I got the chance to test three of the most popular ones on the market from Outdoor Voices, Aerie, and Girlfriend Collective. Each dress has thin straps and a stretchy bodysuit with shorts underneath, but that’s about as far as the comparisons go. Each had a set of pros and cons, but what I’ve deduced is that you really can’t go wrong if you want to be comfortable and stylish. Tennis dresses are a go.

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Zoë Roth says she plans to use proceeds from sale of 2005 image of her smirking in front of burning house to pay student loans

Zoë Roth, the woman whose picture was central to the 2005 Disaster Girl meme, has sold the original photo for $473,000 – the latest addition to the cryptocurrency-linked, digital image NFT craze that is sweeping through the art market.

The image was taken of Roth, then aged four, by her father in front of a burning house in Mebane, North Carolina. Firefighters had intentionally set the blaze as a controlled fire.

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Karen Sue Boes has been insisting she did not kill her 14-year-old daughter Robin since the day her Zeeland, Michigan, house caught on fire almost two decades ago.

As police interrogated her multiple times over six weeks, the 65-year-old maintained she was out shopping with a friend when the tragic fire broke out, killing Robin. But during one grueling questioning on Aug. 7, 2002, police eventually got her to admit she possibly started the fire while in a “dream” or “unconscious” state.

“They had me really disoriented,” Boes told The Daily Beast in a phone interview from the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility on Thursday. “I really started thinking I was going crazy. I knew I didn’t do it. I absolutely knew that, but they kept putting all these scenarios in my head. After hours and hours of that, you start doubting yourself.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Fifteen years after it was axed, the iconic show is a drawing in nostalgia junkies by offering eclectic music, dodgy lip-syncing ... and lockdown escapism

For many of us, it was the soundtrack to our childhood. The opening riff of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love still inspires an atavistic excitement in full-grown adults decades on. On Thursday – and later Friday – evenings, warbling singers and preening boybands would be beamed into homes across the nation as we waited to see which artist would take that week’s coveted No 1 spot. But in 2006, after years of falling ratings, Top of the Pops was cancelled. As music and TV streaming fractured our collective viewing habits, the singles chart started to feel like an irrelevance and, therefore, so did TOTP.

Related: In sync: how the mime-ban stripped Top of the Pops of its charm

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Former minister tells public inquiry of ‘staggering scale’ of covert monitoring of peaceful protesters

The former cabinet minister Peter Hain has accused undercover police officers of lying in their secret reports about the campaign he and others ran against apartheid and racism.

The Labour politician told a public inquiry the officers “very rarely told the truth” and exaggerated the threat of violence posed by the campaigners in what he called “straight lies and pernicious smears”.

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iPhone and iPad maker distorts competition for streaming services such as Spotify, says commissioner

Apple has been accused of breaking EU law by charging high fees and setting unfair rules on those selling their products in its App Store, resulting typically in a 30% price hike for paying customers.

Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, said the preliminary view was that Apple had distorted competition in the music streaming market by abusing its dominant position and role as a “gatekeeper” to the 1.8m apps in its store.

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