Nicola Sturgeon on not defining her sexuality
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Kneecap banned in Hungary but vow to use their platform to call out ‘genocide and the war criminals'
This summer has seen Irish rappers Kneecap dropped from a number of line-ups, including Germany's Hurricane and Southside festivals, as well as being slapped with a three-year ban from Hungary ahead of their planned performance at Sziget – where the band would have played tonight. 'It is important to say that Hungary is an island of freedom and peace in a troubled world. Here, no one can be abused because of their origin or religion, even verbally. The organizers could have been wise enough not to invite them and not put Hungary in such a situation.' These were the words of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, referring to Kneecap's ban. Orbán also labelled Kneecap as 'anti-Semitic', with the Hungarian government stating that the band's statements cannot be protected by artistic freedom or freedom of expression. The band has denied accusations of anti-Semitism, claiming that those attacking the band 'weaponize' the false accusation to 'distract, confuse, and provide cover for genocide.' Kneecap has not been deterred and has frequently used their platform at various music festivals to speak out not against the Jewish people but against Israel's war in Gaza. They did so at Coachella – where they denounced the US government's funding of 'war criminal Israel'; at Best Kept Secret - where the pre-show screening denounces the 'Israeli genocide and the Western media's cover-up"; at Glastonbury – where their controversial set alongside Bob Vylan launched a police investigation; and most recently during their set at Øyafestivalen in Oslo. Related Glastonbury controversy explained: Police investigate Kneecap and Bob Vylan sets Police drop criminal investigation into Kneecap after controversial Glastonbury performance BBC director of music steps down after Bob Vylan Glastonbury controversy Indeed, the band criticised the Norwegian government ahead of their performance at the festival last Friday (8 August), displaying a message on the video screen that accused the Norwegian government of 'enabling' the 'genocide' in Gaza through the country's 'oil pension fund'. Kneecap were referring to the Government Pension Fund of Norway, which invests surplus revenues from the country's petroleum industry and has a reported €1.6trillion in assets. The fund has faced controversy after a recent report from Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten found it had invested around €13million in Bet Shemesh Engines Ltd. – a jet engines parts manufacturer supplying the Israeli military – between 2023-2024. In the wake of the report, the Norwegian government has launched a review of the fund to ensure that it is not investing in Israeli companies contributing to the war in Gaza. Norway has also recognised Palestine as a state. 'Over 80,000 people have been murdered by Israel in 21 months,' Kneecap's message continued. 'Free Palestine.' During their Oslo performance, Kneecap could be heard on stage saying: 'The fact is, as long as we're on stage and as long as nothing is changing, Kneecap will always use this platform and this stage to call out the genocide and the war criminals. I don't need to lecture you people when your oil fund is being used to fund the genocide.' Band member Mo Chara also gave a 'quick shout-out' to Øyafestivalen for 'standing by Kneecap' despite calls for them to be removed from the line-up. Not every festival stands by Kneecap's freedom of expression, as evidenced by the recent news that the band's upcoming gig in Vienna on 1 September has been cancelled 'due to acute safety concerns', following political pressure from Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). However, and despite the ban, Sziget tried to defend Kneecap's performance for as long as it could. The organisers' position was to condemn hate speech, but to guarantee all performers the right to artistic expression. Related Kneecap debut London billboards ahead of 'witch hunt' terror court appearance Artists support Kneecap as UK counterterror police confirm investigation A statement from Sziget also mentions that they have been in close contact with members of Kneecap, who assured them that their show would not violate Hungarian law or Sziget's principles. Still, the Hungarian government's decision means that fans will be left wanting. Festival director Tamás Kádár called the ban on Kneecap an unprecedented, unnecessary and regrettable move that will damage Sziget and Hungary's international image. Kádár told Euronews Culture at a press briefing on Day Zero that many in the pop scene were deeply shocked by what had happened, and that he believed the issue went far beyond Kneecap. "I think that this is not about the band, but about the world's attitude to culture in general, or politics' attitude to culture,' Kádár said, adding: 'Or rather, the fact that recently, politics and war have entered the cultural life of the day. And it seems that not all politicians know what to do with that." Conversely, audiences do know what to do, as many were heard chanting "dirty Fidesz" (Orbán's national-conservative party) and several Free Palestine flags were seen during the opening day of Sziget festival. While Hungarian audiences have been deprived of Kneecap, many other festivals are sticking with the band – including the upcoming Green Man Festival in Wales. The band has more than forty concerts remaining on its calendar for this year – including dates in Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and Belgium – and then a US leg which kicks off in October. Since Hamas' attack on Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, multiple UN human rights experts have stated that Israel's military actions in Gaza amount to genocide, with the International Court of Justice finding claims of genocide plausible. Israel has rejected the genocide accusations and maintain that its operations are lawful acts of self-defence. Claims Kneecap have vocally rebuked. And will continue to do so.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Alien: Earth's Sydney Chandler had xenomorph nightmares, now she fights them
The actor, show creator Noah Hawley and her co-stars Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther and more speak to Yahoo UK about the Disney+ series. The Alien movies remain some of the scariest films ever made, especially Ridley Scott's 1979 original. The xenomorph stalked many people's nightmares the same way it rampaged across the USCSS Nostromo; it did for Alien: Earth's Sydney Chandler, which made the FX series an interesting challenge, she tells Yahoo UK. "I watched Alien when I was very young, so it terrified me, and the xenomorph was definitely part of my nightmares," the actor admits. "It'd be hanging out in the corner of my scary dreams." Chandler joins Alien: Earth as Wendy, the TV show's answer to Ellen Ripley. Wendy is a sick child whose consciousness is transferred from her dying body to a synthetic one, played by Chandler. She's part of a secret experiment by tech billionaire Kid Cavalier (Samuel Blenkin) to create the next stage of human evolution, but Wendy is still attached to her old life and watches out for her brother CJ (Alex Lawther) from afar. So when a spaceship crash-lands on Earth and he is sent as a medic to find survivors of the wreckage, Wendy is determined to protect him. Only the spaceship holds more than just humans; there's a whole host of invasive alien species on board, including a rampaging xenomorph. Chandler has several xenomorph encounters over the course of the eight-episode series, and had to remind herself that the scenes she had weren't part of her nightmares: "It was actually really surreal working with a real-life xenomorph filming because it's 4:00 a.m. and you're a little tired and that nightmare creeps up on you. "And you're like, 'No. Everything's fine! We're all good, we're not in the dream. But this is really real right now.'" Lawther admits that while the cast knew what they were seeing wasn't real, the response to the xenomorph on set was "quite physical and quite instantaneous", which made it easier to bring their characters to life. "It was actually scary, yeah, but then also it means you don't have to do much thinking about the acting because your body is just responding. [You're] getting drooled on and pinned down." "It's a different type of acting," Chandler chimes in. "It's all physical, and then you just have to let yourself be open enough to be terrified." Their costar Babou Ceesay, who plays cyborg Marrow and the sole survivor of the spaceship beset by a xenomorph, was faced with the creature much earlier than the rest of the cast. "The most scary moment was during our screen test," he reflects. "Noah does these very involved screen tests, it's like shooting the series, and there I am standing opposite this 8-foot-tall xenomorph, leaning in, the animatronic mouth is coming out. All the goop, the KY Jelly, is rolling down its lips, and that was a bit freaky, to be honest. "At that point, I just felt threatened! Also, it's so big, and there's that big dome. Noah [Hawley, the show's creator, is] checking if you're gonna hold your nerve." At the very least, the man behind the xenomorph costume, Cameron Brown, was lovely when the cameras cut, which made up for the way he terrified them on set. Lawther called him "such a sweet person", while Chandler says: "We've been shouting out Cameron Brown, our vegan xenomorph from New Zealand, all day. He's so lovely." A new era for the Alien franchise Alien: Earth is the first time that the franchise has been made into a TV series, and for that reason, the story had to differentiate itself from what has come before. That's what creator Noah Hawley was most interested in doing, and, to achieve that, he had to think back to Scott's original film, but not in the way you'd expect: "The first [thing I did] is simply, without going back to rewatch the film, to just think about how the original film made me feel, and why it made me feel that way, and then think how can I create those same feelings in the audience without telling them the same story and do something new. "I was really looking at the themes and the elements that are in there. Alien is not just a monster movie, it's also a story in which - at the moment we need the most help - we realise that the AI that we've created are turning on us, right? There's something about that moment where humanity is trapped between the past and the future, and they're both trying to kill us. "That felt like it was really right for storytelling in long form; you can't just do a survival story. It has to be richer thematically, and so from that comes the first story ideas, which in this case were about how if we're going to Earth, what is Earth? And how is it organised? And this idea of this race for immortality and the future of humanity that leads to the story that we're telling." While the show aims to create something new for the franchise, there is one aspect of the series that is the same as what has come before — a female lead. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley started it all and led multiple movies, but the subsequent sequels and prequels have all similarly centred on women. This meant Chandler felt some pressure on her shoulders to uphold and continue the legacy her forebears had built. "It's surreal," she admits to Yahoo UK. "I think the beauty of that through line with the strong female character is you get to explore aspects of womanhood that you don't always see in cinema. "But I can't even allow myself to try and compare this piece to the others. That original film lives solely on its own, and Noah was able to find a way to honour what that movie gives us as fans and then create his own world. "Which, I think, is the only way to do it because you can't recreate Alien. You can only honour it and explore the world of it." The person who helped her navigate the weight of responsibility was Lawther, who she describes as being a brother to her after making the series. Chandler says: "He was my lifeline, like for this whole thing." "It's a long time to be away from home," the Andor star quips, to which Chandler adds: "Yeah and I don't know what I'm doing!" The pair almost feel like siblings as they talk, with Lawther quickly chiming in to say "she does" know what she's doing before Chandler goes on: "I definitely looked to you to see how you handled such a big set and such a layered character. And you kept me so grounded, and you're just such a calm energy to be around and such a giving actor. "So I was able to tune out all pressure and fear, especially at the beginning, and just be with you. So that was very helpful." Lawther adds fondly: "For me too, all of that is true, and I think [I felt it] even from our early conversations, we spoke on the phone before we arrived in Thailand — we didn't get to meet before — and it's like making friends, isn't it? Sometimes you just fall into place with someone, and we were lucky." "Yeah, we're family now!" Chandler happily declares. On the other side of the humanity versus AI debate is Timothy Olyphant's Kirsh, a synthetic being who acts as the father figure to Wendy and her fellow synthetic/human hybrids. With his electric blond hair and bleached eyebrows, the Justified star certainly looks worlds apart from his usual self, but there is one Ridley Scott creation Kirsch might feel at home with: Blade Runner's Roy Batty. When asked if his look was a clever homage or a happy accident, Olyphant jokes: "Well, if you say it's clever, then yes. It was an homage, whether it was clever or not, I don't know! But when that role came up in one of the first conversations I had with Noah, I brought up the look as a way of bringing it to that character. "I can't remember if we were talking about him and that role and that led to it or if it was doing the hair and the hair brought us to [Roy Batty], but it came up early." He continues: "The cool thing about television, and especially television with Noah Hawley, is he's very receptive to the possibilities as you go. There's this wonderful thing [that happens] sometimes, when people write something they have something in mind, and if you put it on its feet, they say, 'oh, oh, OK' and then they start to explore that. That's where the back and forth starts to happen, and they can write to [your] ideas. "And I think, very early on, when he reached out about this, I heard Kirsch was the scientist and I was like 'I don't really do scientists but I do this other thing over here' and so we started talking about it. That was the beginning of it for me, anyway; it was the beginning of 'let's take this idea and see if we can fit these things together.' Ridley Scott's input on Alien: Earth Scott has always been open to other people taking his creations and morphing them into something different; directors like James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet have all tackled the franchise in sequels. Scott is open to people doing something new, and Hawley says that's exactly how he was with Alien: Earth. "I was talking with FX about the show in the abstract for a long time, and then once it became clear that we could actually get the rights to do it from the film division, then we started talking to Ridley about it," he explains. "And in the early days we talked, mostly I wanted to hear his experiences and inspirations, to see if there was anything that he hadn't managed to get into his three movies that he thought were still interesting. "And then I just would sort of lay out where my head was on it as well. You know, this is a man with a lot of demands on his time, and whenever I was speaking to him, he was always storyboarding what seemed like a different movie every time we spoke. So I think, like the Coen brothers for [the] Fargo TV show, when he realised that I had my vision and my path, he just was supportive." The series is produced by David W. Zucker, who is Chief Creative Officer of the filmmaker's production company Scott Free. He adds that the Gladiator director likes to see where others can take his creations. "He was a painter by trade to start, and I think the way he approaches his work is he completes his canvas and he moves on to the next," he says. "And I think he was excited about the opportunity to interface with Noah and provide whatever insight, and as much support and encouragement, as he can with the excitement for what may result from an entirely fresh pursuit. "It's really pioneering, I think, on Noah's part, because while it has that sort of original content to reference, it is an entirely different format, and one that he is truly a master of." One original idea that Hawley brought to the world of Alien was the prospect of new extraterrestrial life. They're very different to the xenomorph but equally as scary, which is something the show creator was keen to explore. "In order for them to work as successfully as the xenomorph they really have to tap into some primal fears of ours," Hawley says of the new aliens viewers will meet in Alien: Earth. "Whether it's about parasites, insects, predators, all of those things are mostly about our bodily autonomy, and those deep genetic revulsions that we have. "And so, for me, it was always the functionality of trying to figure out what were the worst things that I could think of, and then embodying them in creature form, which was the design process we went through with WETA, and then into the physical. Making the props, the references, the creatures and then into a visual effects medium." Reflecting on the scariest aliens he came up with, Hawley adds: "Anything that has to do with our face and our eyes and the loss of control, I think, is a really interesting thing to do to an audience. But you've added that dimension of insect-like creatures that also have an awareness of us that we wouldn't want in the world we live in now, at that scale." "There was a moment Ridley told me that what he wanted to do was that he wanted to have the xenomorph kill Ripley and then get on the radio and mimic her voice and then head off to Earth. He didn't do that, but he had that thought, and so I think there is something to that idea. That sort of invasion of the body snatchers idea is still really scary." It's an expansion of the lore that the cast appreciated too, with Blenkin sharing: "I think it's absolutely essential to expand the universe from the original film. The original film is a two-hour survival film, and we've got eight hours of television to fill, and what Noah Hawley is so incredible at is threading in character arcs that weave together in this... I think it's character-driven, which makes it really special. Ceesay adds: "And audacious to go, well, we're going to bring in new alien life forms to really bring that ick factor that you felt when you first met the xenomorph. It's amazing." Whether the new additions to the Alien franchise stand the test of time is up to the audience. But Hawley, Chandler and her fellow co-stars have given everything they can to the show, and that's all we can ask for. Alien: Earth premieres with its first two episodes on Disney+ on Wednesday, 13 August.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Maya Jama reveals Ruben Dias' staggering trophy cabinet
Manchester City vice-captain Ruben Dias has seen his remarkable trophy cabinet unveiled on Instagram by girlfriend Maya Jama. The Portugal international has become one of the most decorated defenders in European football since joining Manchester City in the summer of 2020, playing a vital role in the club's era of dominance under Pep Guardiola. From Premier League titles to UEFA Champions League glory, Dias has built an impressive personal collection of silverware, and fans have now been given a rare look inside his home trophy display thanks to a casual post from his high-profile partner. Since confirming their relationship earlier this year, Maya Jama and Ruben Dias have become one of football's most talked-about celebrity couples. Jama – a widely recognised figure in British television – has frequently been spotted attending City matches and supporting Dias both publicly and privately. But her latest Instagram story may have given Manchester City fans their favourite glimpse yet behind the scenes of the club's elite inner circle. With Dias widely regarded as a key figure in Pep Guardiola's leadership group, it comes as no surprise that his domestic success is matched by an equally commanding home tribute to his achievements. Now, thanks to Jama's post, supporters have been able to marvel at the stunning collection amassed by one of City's most consistent performers. Posing for a selfie upload to her Instagram story on Thursday, the television presenter and partner of the Manchester City defender showcased the remarkable haul of honours placed in a position of pride within Dias' city centre apartment. Dias' trophy cabinet includes four consecutive Premier League titles, a UEFA Champions League winners' medal, an FA Cup triumph, and a host of individual accolades, including Manchester City's Player of the Season for 2020/21 and a UEFA Champions League Team of the Season inclusion. His role in City's historic treble-winning campaign during the 2022/23 season arguably remains the standout moment of his career thus far. While the trophy cabinet may be located in a private residence, the display is symbolic of Dias' leadership and winning mentality – a trait that Pep Guardiola and his staff have repeatedly praised. His on-field presence, vocal authority, and willingness to guide younger teammates like Josko Gvardiol and Vitor Reis highlight why he continues to be one of the squad's most respected senior figures. As Manchester City prepare to embark on a new campaign with aspirations of reclaiming the Premier League and making another push for Champions League success, Ruben Dias' influence will again be critical. He remains one of the club's fittest and most dependable players, often available when others around him are battling injury setbacks.
