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Global News Weekend at 6 Calgary: July 19, 2025

Global News Weekend at 6 Calgary: July 19, 2025

Global News8 hours ago
B.C. dad hoping to see his cloud photo on TV get his wish following viral TikTok campaign
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Shelter Dog, 4, Gets in a Car—Not Knowing She's Going to First Ever Home
Shelter Dog, 4, Gets in a Car—Not Knowing She's Going to First Ever Home

Newsweek

timea few seconds ago

  • Newsweek

Shelter Dog, 4, Gets in a Car—Not Knowing She's Going to First Ever Home

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A dog named Maggie who had never experienced a home in her four years of life is finally receiving a break from shelter life thanks to first-time foster parents stepping in. Mel, who is known on TikTok as @meltoddpt, reached out to Dogs 4 Rescue in Manchester, United Kingdom, with hopes of fostering a dog. This would be her first time, but she's no stranger to the companionship canines bring. "I have had dogs for 25 years until I lost my last dog in February 2024," she told Newsweek via TikTok. "It's taken a long time to feel I'm ready, as it broke my heart losing her." Dogs 4 Rescue connected Mel and her family to Maggie, a 4-year-old dog rescued from the streets of Cyprus and brought to the U.K. They welcomed her home on Sunday, and Mel said she's already fallen head over heels for Maggie. She shared in a July 15 video on her TikTok account, Maggie's ride from the animal shelter to her first-ever home. Nervous, Maggie sat with her head down. But as soon as she got a head scratch, she lifted her head and looked longingly at Mel. She knew she had been saved. "She is the most beautiful, gentle, kind soul," she said. "All she wants to do is sleep on the sofa and have her belly rubbed." Despite never living in a house, Mel said Maggie has been "good as gold." However, she is timid. She's scared of everything outside—the noises and movement. Maggie found her safe spot to be the sofa, which she rarely moves from. But she's becoming braver as the days continue. They're working on building her confidence, both inside and outside. "She really is beginning to trust me, though, and she comes to me for comfort and knows I'm safe to follow," Mel said. "We just need to build that up to walks now, but I think she will always be timid." Screenshots from a July 15 TikTok video of a woman fostering a 4-year-old dog who never lived in a home. Screenshots from a July 15 TikTok video of a woman fostering a 4-year-old dog who never lived in a home. @meltoddpt/TikTok TikTok Users React Like Mel, TikTok users fell in love with Maggie. The video has amassed over 105,400 views and 7,163 likes at the time of writing. "Those gorgeous eyes. She has a lot of love to give," wrote one user. Another added: "Aww Maggie, you are so very sweet. Wishing you a lovely life now filled with care, love and cuddles. Thank you for rescuing her." A third pointed out: "Her eyes break my heart. She is lucky you found her, give her love." Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@ with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.

‘Coldplaygate' is a stark reminder that cameras are everywhere
‘Coldplaygate' is a stark reminder that cameras are everywhere

Indian Express

timea few seconds ago

  • Indian Express

‘Coldplaygate' is a stark reminder that cameras are everywhere

The internet's latest obsession occurred at, of all places, a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts. During the concert Wednesday night, Chris Martin, the band's frontman, announced that he would be singing to a select few fans in the crowd. 'The way we're going to do that is using our cameras,' he said. 'So, if you look at the screens, we're going to come looking and see who's out there to say hello to.' After Martin sang a happy birthday song to one ecstatic fan while playing mellow guitar, a giant screen in the stadium showed a couple embracing. The man, who the internet quickly identified as Andy Byron, the married CEO of a tech company called Astronomer, held his arms around Kristin Cabot, the company's chief people officer who is not his wife. 'Oh, look at these two,' Martin said, prepared to sing another sweet song. Then things became awkward. When Cabot noticed her face on the screen, she immediately jumped out of Byron's arms, covered her face and turned around. He ducked out of view. A woman standing beside them was seen cupping her face in disbelief, her mouth wide open. Martin, realizing what was happening, said: 'Wow, what? Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy. I'm not quite sure what to do.' The identities of Byron and Cabot were confirmed by a spokesperson for Astronomer on Friday night after the company issued a statement saying Byron had been placed on leave and that the company's chief product officer, Peter DeJoy, would serve as interim CEO. Saturday afternoon, Astronomer issued another statement saying that Byron had resigned and that the board of directors would begin a search for his replacement. Astronomer, a data infrastructure company that works with companies to manage and automate data, had previously said it was launching an investigation of the incident and that 'our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.' The incident, which has dominated social media, was a stark reminder of how quickly things can spread thanks to social media and how cameras are surrounding people at all times. That is especially true at large concerts where fans are often recording snippets or streaming them on social media. Case in point: The video of Wednesday's interaction was posted by a concertgoer with a modest TikTok following. But thanks to the power of that app's algorithm, it had more than 77 million views as of Friday evening. It took only a few seconds of video for Byron and Cabot to thoroughly dominate internet discourse and become an instant meme, which many have called 'Coldplaygate.' As the video circulated, some shared their advice for the couple, suggesting they could have covered themselves in a blanket or thrown on a pair of shades. Others pointed out how awkward things would be at their office the next day. The moment proceeded to be shared, and joked about, by politicians, corporations and even New York City's sanitation department. From there, it turned into a broader discussion of privacy and why they had been wrong to assume they would not be seen and, potentially, recorded. 'If you're in a public place, there is absolutely no expectation of privacy,' said Charles Lindsey, an associate professor of marketing at University at Buffalo School of Management. 'When you're in a public place, whether it be a public park, a store, a concert, there are cameras, and if it's on camera, you can't take it back.' That lesson had been learned by plenty of people before this incident. There was the time in May when the door of a plane carrying French President Emmanuel Macron had just been opened by staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, when his wife, Brigitte Macron, pushed him in the face. When he looked up and noticed a camera filming the scene from outside, he waved. The video quickly gained traction online, leading to a flurry of interpretations. In 2024, there was a great deal of debate over a woman posting videos on TikTok in which she assumed she was witnessing an extramarital affair taking place on a plane. And there was the infamous Met Gala elevator incident in 2014, where Solange Knowles was seen attacking Jay-Z while her sister, Beyoncé, stood watching and a bodyguard tried to restore order. The security-cam footage leaked to TMZ, and it became fodder for the public. 'We live in a very intrusive world, in terms of cameras and digital footprints,' Lindsey said. 'It can take 10 or 20 years to build a reputation, and you can lose it in a moment.'

Reform UK is on the march - and the most popular party on TikTok. There's just one problem
Reform UK is on the march - and the most popular party on TikTok. There's just one problem

Sky News

time21 minutes ago

  • Sky News

Reform UK is on the march - and the most popular party on TikTok. There's just one problem

Reform UK is on the march. Following a barnstorming performance in this year's local elections, they are now the most successful political party on TikTok, engaging younger audiences. But most of their 400,000 followers are men. I was at the local elections launch for Reform in March, looking around for any young women to interview who had come to support the party at its most ambitious rally yet, and I was struggling. A woman wearing a "let's save Britain" hat walked by, and I asked her to help me. "Now you say it, there are more men here," she said. But she wasn't worried, adding: "We'll get the women in." And that probably best sums up Reform's strategy. When Nigel Farage threw his hat into the ring to become an MP for Reform, midway through the general election campaign, they weren't really thinking about the diversity of their base. 1:48 As a result, they attracted a very specific politician. Fewer than 20% of general election candidates for Reform were women, and the five men elected were all white with a median age of 60. Polling shows that best, too. According to YouGov's survey from June 2025, a year on from the election, young women are one of Reform UK's weakest groups, with just 7% supporting Farage's party - half the rate of men in the same age group. The highest support comes from older men, with a considerable amount of over-65s backing Reform - almost 40%. But the party hoped to change all that at the local elections. Time to go pro It was the closing act of Reform's September conference and Farage had his most serious rallying cry: it was time for the party to "professionalise". In an interview with me last year, Farage admitted "no vetting" had occurred for one of his new MPs, James McMurdock. Only a couple of months after he arrived in parliament, it was revealed he had been jailed after being convicted of assaulting his then girlfriend in 2006 while drunk outside a nightclub. McMurdock told me earlier this year: "I would like to do my best to do as little harm to everyone else and at the same time accept that I was a bad person for a moment back then. I'm doing my best to manage the fact that something really regrettable did happen." He has since suspended himself from the party over allegations about his business affairs. He has denied any wrongdoing. 0:40 Later, two women who worked for another of Reform's original MPs, Rupert Lowe, gave "credible" evidence of bullying or harassment by him and his team, according to a report from a KC hired by the party. Lowe denies all wrongdoing and says the claims were retaliation after he criticised Farage in an interview with the Daily Mail, describing his then leader's style as "messianic". The Crown Prosecution Service later said it would not charge Lowe after an investigation. He now sits as an independent MP. 1:04 A breakthrough night But these issues created an image problem and scuppered plans for getting women to join the party. So, in the run-up to the local elections, big changes were made. The first big opportunity presented itself when a by-election was called in Runcorn and Helsby. The party put up Sarah Pochin as a candidate, and she won a nail-biting race by just six votes. Reform effectively doubled their vote share there compared to the general election - jumping to 38% - and brought its first female MP into parliament. And in the Lincolnshire mayoral race - where Andrea Jenkyns was up for the role - they won with 42% of the vote. The council results that night were positive, too, with Reform taking control of 10 local authorities. They brought new recruits into the party - some of whom had never been involved in active politics. 6:11 'The same vibes as Trump' Catherine Becker is one of them and says motherhood, family, and community is at the heart of Reform's offering. It's attracted her to what she calls Reform's "common sense" policies. As Reform's parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Highgate in last year's general election, and now a councillor, she also taps into Reform's strategy of hyper-localism - trying to get candidates to talk about local issues of crime, family, and law and order in the community above everything else. Jess Gill was your quintessential Labour voter: "I'm northern, I'm working class, I'm a woman, based on the current stereotype that would have been the party for me." But when Sir Keir Starmer knelt for Black Lives Matter, she said that was the end of her love affair with the party, and she switched. "Women are fed up of men not being real men," she says. "Starmer is a bit of a wimp, where Nigel Farage is a funny guy - he gives the same vibes as Trump in a way." 'Shy Reformers' But most of Reform's recruits seem to have defected from the Conservative Party, according to the data, and this is where the party sees real opportunity. Anna McGovern was one of those defectors after the astonishing defeat of the Tories in the general election. She thinks there may be "shy Reformers" - women who support the party but are unwilling to speak about it publicly. "You don't see many young women like myself who are publicly saying they support Reform," she says. "I think many people fear that if they publicly say they support Reform, what their friends might think about them. I've faced that before, where people have made assumptions of my beliefs because I've said I support Reform or more right-wing policies." But representation isn't their entire strategy. Reform have pivoted to speaking about controversial topics - the sort they think the female voters they're keen to attract may be particularly attuned to. "Reform are speaking up for women on issues such as transgenderism, defining what a woman is," McGovern says. And since Reform's original five MPs joined parliament, grooming gangs have been mentioned 159 times in the Commons - compared to the previous 13 years when it was mentioned 88 times, despite the scandal first coming to prominence back in 2011. But the pitfall of that strategy is where it could risk alienating other communities. Pochin, Reform's first and only female MP, used her first question in parliament to the prime minister to ask if he would ban the burka - something that isn't Reform policy, but which she says was "punchy" to "get the attention to start the debate". 0:31 'What politics is all about' Alex Philips was the right-hand woman to Farage during the Brexit years. She's still very close to senior officials in Reform and a party member, and tells me these issues present an opportunity. "An issue in politics is a political opportunity and what democracy is for is actually putting a voice to a representation, to concerns of the public. That's what politics is all about." Luke Tryl is the executive director of the More In Common public opinion and polling firm, and says the shift since the local elections is targeted and effective. Reform's newer converts are much more likely to be female, as the party started to realise you can't win a general election without getting the support of effectively half the electorate. "When we speak to women, particularly older women in focus groups, there is a sense that women's issues have been neglected by the traditional mainstream parties," he says. "Particularly issues around women's safety, and women's concerns aren't taken as seriously as they should be. "If Reform could show it takes their concerns seriously, they may well consolidate their support." According to his focus groups, the party's vote share among women aged 18 to 26 shot up in May - jumping from 12% to 21% after the local elections. But the gender divide in right-wing parties is still stark, Tryl says, and representation will remain an uphill battle for a party historically dogged by controversy and clashes. A Reform UK spokesman told Sky News: "Reform is attracting support across all demographics. "Our support with women has surged since the general election a year ago, in that time we have seen Sarah Pochin and Andrea Jenkyns elected in senior roles for the party."

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