Latest news with #Isabella
New Straits Times
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
#SHOWBIZ: Melly Goeslaw gives Malaysian fans a most colourful 'Prom Night'
KUALA LUMPUR: Popular Indonesian singer-songwriter Melly Goeslaw had more than 9,000 guests dancing and singing at their seats throughout her two-and-a-half-hour concert at Axiata Arena in Bukit Jalil here. Her 9pm show organised by Icon Entertainment was the third season of "Ada Apa Dengan Melly & Friends?" which was also staged at the same venue last year. The concert was themed "Prom Night" and saw Melly, her musicians, backup singers and dancers all dressed in colourful and fanciful costumes. The 51-year-old artiste performed 26 songs, with several medleys. Among the hits that she performed were "Ingin Mencintai Dan Dicintai", "Berdua Lebih Baik", "Hey Ladies", and "Ku Bahagia". Melly also performed covers of Malaysian songs "Janji Manismu" (Datuk Aishah Ariffin), "Isabella" (Search) and "Betapa Ku Cinta Padamu" (Datuk Seri Siti Nurhaliza). Her guest artistes for the evening were Aina Abdul, Nicholas Saputra and Dinda Ghania, and Radin of Era served as the master of ceremonies. Among the artistes who attended the concert were Datuk M. Nasir, Siti Nurhaliza, Datuk Amy Search, Elite and Raffi Ahmad. From their seats, Siti Nurhaliza joined Melly in the song "Betapa Ku Cinta Padamu" while Amy joined her in "Isabella". Born in Bandung, Melly began singing as a backup vocalist for Elfa Secioria while she was still in secondary school. She is the daughter of the late veteran Indonesian pop singer Melky Goeslaw. In 1995, she formed the band Potret with her musician husband Anto Hoed. After releasing several albums with Potret, Melly began a solo career, releasing her eponymous debut album "Melly" in 1999. She reached the peak of her popularity in 2002 when she composed the soundtrack of the best-selling movie "Ada Apa Dengan Cinta?". Melly's onstage persona has been compared to Icelandic pop queen Bjork, with eccentric costumes and "wild" hairstyles. "Ada Apa Dengan Cinta?" garnered her a Citra Award at the 2004 Indonesian Film Festival. She has written and composed more than 500 songs, produced movie soundtracks and judged reality talent contests in her three-decade career.
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
Local dancer shines at Croatian International Dance Open
South African dancer Isabella van Tonder, who is a learner at Brescia House School, recently returned from the International Dance Open in Zagreb, Croatia, where she represented the country and gained life-changing experiences According to Isabella, the competition pushed her, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. 'I learned what it truly means to be both a team player and a team leader. Being part of a supportive and kind team helped me grow, and I found myself becoming someone the younger dancers could look up to.' She explained that the language barrier with dancers from other countries was challenging, but said they found ways to connect, using Google Translate and shared smiles to build bonds across borders. 'Even with the differences, it was amazing to see how dance unites us.' Also read: Class of 2025 celebrates Centennial Schools' inaugural matric dance Isabella said one of her biggest takeaways was learning to stay calm under pressure. 'The backstage environment was loud and stressful, but I had a kind of switch in my mind where I found calm in the chaos. That helped me perform better and stay focused.' She explained that the competition also exposed her to different styles of European dance, which she plans to incorporate into her training. 'I did an open ballet class with a Russian instructor who did not speak English, but she still managed to teach us valuable techniques. My dad always says: 'You are never too experienced to learn', and that stuck with me.' Read more: Brescia's Arwen Terblanche strikes gold at national orienteering champs Isabella pointed out the emotional depth of watching her teammates perform. 'I actually cried seeing their raw emotion on stage. It reminded me why I dance: To express, to feel, and to connect.' Now, she is back home, and more motivated than ever. 'This experience taught me that things don't have to be perfect. As long as you dance your best, you should be proud.' Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! Have a story idea? We'd love to hear from you – join our WhatsApp group and share your thoughts! At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
The National
2 days ago
- The National
How Skye has 'flourished' in the 30 years since the bridge opened
The Isle of Skye is the second most visited destination in Scotland after Edinburgh. This year the Skye bridge is 30 years old and is the gateway to the island for the majority of visitors. For an island with single-track roads and rural infrastructure, it's a lot to manage. Visit Scotland works hard to market other parts of Scotland yet the pull of the Cuillins is magnetic. The dramatic cliffs and peaks of Skye, the miles of coastline, the constantly changing light . . . there's nowhere quite like it. I'm far from immune. Growing up in Lochaber, the mountains of Skye were always on my horizon and, as an adult, I take every opportunity to visit, particularly out of season. Whether out hiking, visiting distilleries or eating my way around Skye, every visit I discover somewhere new and fall a little further under the island's spell. In the 30 years since the bridge opened, the hospitality industry has flourished. Today Skye's restaurants, cafés and distilleries are as much of a draw as the mountains and beauty spots. Isabella Macdonald runs Kinloch Lodge ( at the end of a single-track road on the Sleat peninsula. It's one of my favourite hotels in Scotland. Isabella remembers Skye before the bridge. 'I have so many childhood memories of queuing for ferries, or just missing the last one,' she says. 'A lot of the dislike for the project was because of the tolls. I'd liken it to the Edinburgh trams: initial grumbling but very quickly people grew to love it. Now we wouldn't be without it. It's made Skye so much more accessible. As a business owner you're not worrying about your guests missing the ferry or booking one in time. It definitely helps with attracting visitors year round too.' Dinner at Kinloch Lodge is a treat, with the menu changing daily depending on available produce, the weather and what chef Jordan Webb and his creative team dream up. When I visit that's Skye venison tacos as a snack, a beautiful seared Skye scallop in a light dashi with pak choi and peanuts, then poached Shetland cod with home-smoked lobster. (Image: UNKNOWN) The hotel still feels like the Clan Macdonald family home with portraits ranging from ancient oil paintings to recent school photos of the current youngest generation. It also offers a tapas-style lunch menu. I delight in west coast crab with foraged Alexanders on toast, and scallop sashimi, all in the idyllic garden overlooking Loch na Dal. A little further south on the Sleat peninsula is Torabhaig Distillery ( a newer rival to the island's mighty Talisker. Both make fine whisky but I prefer the intimate tour experience at Torabhaig. When the distillery opened it trained up members of the local community for all the new roles including the distillers. 'We meld into the community because we brought the community here,' tour guide manager Anne says. Having the bridge meant building this new island distillery was far easier, particularly when transporting huge wooden washbacks. The café at Torabhaig is excellent, with tasty soup and sandwiches, and whisky-infused traybake to fuel walks. Talisker is still worth a visit, particularly with a booking at The Three Chimneys at Talisker ( which has just been made a permanent fixture in the lochside building opposite the distillery. I've eaten at The Three Chimneys restaurant before and adore it but it's a big budget treat of a place. This café style offering brings the talent of this famous kitchen to a bigger audience. I sit at the elegant bar and enjoy oysters with a spritz of Talisker 10 and a hearty bowl of Cullen Skink. (Image: Lynne Kennedy Photography) On the road to Talisker is Café Cùil ( run by Skye local Clare Coghill, who relocated her café from London after the pandemic. In the iconic red-roofed building I sip a dried flower topped 'machair matcha' and eat delicious blood orange and beetroot cured local trout with crowdie creme fraiche, and hot sweetcorn fritters with chilli. It's a café that arguably could thrive anywhere but here on Skye with local ingredients and Gaelic language and culture celebrated, is where it truly belongs. It's a bright, joyful place to eat and everyone in the queue knows it. Clare says: 'The bridge is our link to civilization. It does more than you think it does. It makes island living more realistic and more appealing to younger people too.' Chef Calum Montgomery at Edinbane Lodge ( agrees: 'Having the bridge has helped my career too. I can finish service then drive to Edinburgh or Glasgow for an event or a meeting and get back on the island when I want, without worrying about missing the last boat.' Calum and Claire are part of a young generation of returning homegrown culinary talent. Calum says: 'We're all deeply rooted in Skye. A lot of us left and worked elsewhere. We'd be seeing the produce we knew arrive miles from where it was landed and it's just not as good as what we grew up eating. I'm so proud of the whole place now.' At Edinbane Lodge I eat an enormous scallop with a dulse butter sauce, and local hake with wild garlic. Calum calls his menu 'A Taste of Skye', and it's exactly that: an embrace of the very best Skye ingredients. The menu shows the distances the produce travels to the restaurant, for the scallops hand dived in Loch Greshornish, the Edinbane venison, the sea herbs and garden vegetables, it's zero miles. Skye can get busy, that's undeniable, but by visiting off-season and exploring beyond the island's tick-box attractions it doesn't have to feel that way. It's a big island with so much to see. Part of the joy of the bridge is visiting Skye is easier year-round: you never need worry about a rocky winter crossing, just look forward to a quiet week of big skies and dramatic scenery. (Image: Michael_Dickie_Square_Foot) More businesses are staying open in winter than ever before, which also creates permanent rather than seasonal jobs. Upgrading infrastructure takes time, and money, but it is happening. There are now good car parks at the Fairy Pools, the Quiraing, the Old Man of Storr, and Neist Point (but only a small heavily rutted one at Coral Beach so be aware). Car park fees help maintain and improve facilities and contribute toconservation and community projects. Potholes do remain an ongoing issue. I try to stay somewhere different each time I'm on Skye. This time it's Bracken Hide Hotel ( on the hill overlooking Portree. Above a spacious hotel restaurant and bar, little wooden 'hides' are dotted up the hillside. Inside the rooms are surprisingly spacious and fitted out in a luxurious Scandi-Scot style. From my front deck I have a panorama of the sky and mountains to myself. The hotel restaurant Am Braigh ( is a great new discovery. I eat leggy langoustines with garlic butter and local samphire. Later my wee deck is a perfect stargazing spot. I also stay a night at sister-hotel Marmalade ( on the other side of Portree. The rooms here are large and lovely, overlooking trees with a distant view of the Cullins. It's an ideal location for exploring Portree, and just a five minute walk from Birch Cafe ( one of Skye's best spots for coffee or brunch. I leave here with a hearty slice of topped focaccia and a perfect pistachio pastel de nata to sustain me on the drive home. As I cross back over the bridge, I glance longingly in my rear-view mirror, already plotting my next trip.
Metro
6 days ago
- Metro
British woman, 21, locked up in Dubai over drugs charges after moving for job
The family of a 21-year-old British woman who was arrested on drug charges shortly after moving to Dubai say cops have the wrong person. Isabella Daggett moved from Leeds to Dubai after getting a new job in the city, but just weeks after making the 4,500-mile journey, she was thrown into a 'hell hole' prison. Her new position was 'similar' to her previous job, where she worked for a businessman who did online recruitment for construction sites across the UK. The exact charges Isabella faces aren't known, but the Yorkshire native was detained when authorities made a drug raid and she was in the 'wrong place'. Grandmum Heather Smith told the Mail: 'Bella has been locked up because she was in the wrong company. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong boyfriend. 'She has been in prison since March, but we have finally got a court date for next month. 'She was arrested with a lad, who was not her boyfriend, with whom she was staying because things had fallen through with another house.' Isabella's grandmother said shortly before her arrest, she had shared plans to move home to Leeds as she 'knew something wasn't right'. Her family is concerned for her well-being, adding: 'Women get treated far worse than male prisoners, who get to go outside, they get sports, a PlayStation and a television – Bella has nothing. 'She hasn't had a shower for a month, she hasn't had a change of clothes for three months. She has had nothing.' Isabella's mother, Lucinda, has started a GoFundMe page to help 'bring Bella home', with a goal of £5,500. 'We have proof she was not involved in these charges and are determined to fight for her freedom. The hideous conditions she is living in is enough to break any mother's heart,' they wrote. Metro has contacted the Foreign Office for a statement. The United Arab Emirates has a zero-tolerance policy toward drug offences. Penalties are severe, with life imprisonment or death possible for trafficking. More Trending Even small amounts intended only for personal use can result in significant fines and deportation. Last week, a British man allegedly caught with £2,000 worth of cocaine in Dubai was sentenced to 40 years in jail. Another Brit has been languishing behind bars in Dubai for 17 years – despite serving his initial 10-year sentence, courts in the UAE extended it by 20 years in 2018, meaning he won't be eligible for release until 2038. Ryan Cornelius was arrested in 2008 during a layover at Dubai Airport and convicted of fraud in a case which has been deemed 'arbitrary' by the United Nations. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Here's how you can protect yourself from being scammed with deepfakes MORE: First picture of officer fighting for life in hospital after being injured while on duty MORE: Man exposed 'buttocks and smacked himself in front of young girls on London bus'
Scroll.in
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Emily Brontë's ‘Wuthering Heights' is a dark parable about coercive control
Coercive or controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship became a criminal offence in the UK in December 2015. The legislation was the result of a long campaign by the charity Women's Aid to extend understanding of domestic abuse beyond physical violence. But, over 150 years earlier, Emily Brontë placed coercive control at the heart of her celebrated gothic romance, Wuthering Heights. The novel is often read as a great love story. It has inspired a Kate Bush song and many stage, film and TV adaptations. But Heathcliff is an abused child who becomes an abuser – and teaches his son to copy, continue and refine his abuse. In the novel, Cathy declares that 'My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!' Coercive control, like Cathy's love, may not be fully visible, but it nonetheless underpins the emotional logic of Brontë's plot. Wuthering Heights is a novel of two halves. The first focuses on spirited, passionate Cathy, caught between her tamely domestic husband Edgar Linton and the thrilling wildness of Heathcliff, her soulmate from childhood. To revenge himself on Cathy for marrying Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's infatuated sister Isabella. Isabella initially sees Heathcliff as a brooding romantic hero, but she soon repents, fleeing with their baby son Linton. Heathcliff and Isabella Heathcliff's abuse of Isabella is sometimes physical, but more often psychological. He takes care, as he tells the family servant Nelly Dean, to 'keep strictly within the limits of the law' to avoid giving Isabella 'the slightest right to claim a separation'. The law grants him ownership of his wife's money and property, but subtler refinements of abuse include humiliation, isolation from family and friends, and deprivation of food, privacy and personal care. At Wuthering Heights, Nelly is shocked to see Isabella unwashed, shabbily dressed. She's 'wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging lankly down'. Isabella has already reported that she is forced to sleep in a chair because Heathcliff keeps 'the key of our room in his pocket'. Heathcliff delights in humbling her before Nelly and his own servants, calling her 'an abject thing', 'shamefully cringing', 'pitiful, slavish, and mean-minded'. Isabella escapes Heathcliff clad only in 'a girlish dress' and 'thin slippers', and goes into hiding with her brother's financial help. After her death, Heathcliff recovers their son Linton and uses him to engineer a second coercive marriage to his cousin, Cathy and Edgar's daughter Catherine. A sickly, peevish adolescent, Linton Heathcliff is perhaps the most unappealing character in Victorian fiction, lacking altogether the strength and charisma of his father. But his puny physicality casts the coercive nature of his abuse into relief. Catherine is imprisoned at Wuthering Heights and blackmailed into consenting to marry Linton, who becomes the legal owner of all her property. Incapable of dominating her physically, Linton delights in psychological torment, conspiring in his father's surveillance and depriving her of beloved possessions: All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine. And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle [Catherine's father], when they were young. That was yesterday – I said they were mine, too. After Linton's death, Heathcliff inherits everything, leaving the widowed and orphaned Catherine his penniless dependant. Wuthering Heights is a dark parable about the absolute power that marriage can grant to abusive men. Real-life inspiration Brontë's plot was rooted in a real-life local case of domestic torment. In 1840, a Mrs Collins came to Haworth Parsonage to ask Emily's father Patrick's advice about her alcoholic, abusive husband. He was Patrick's colleague and fellow clergyman, Rev. John Collins, assistant curate of Keighley. Unusually for the time, Patrick advised her to leave him and take her two children with her. In April 1847, just seven months before Wuthering Heights' publication, Mrs Collins returned to Haworth to thank him. She told the Brontë family how she had settled in Manchester with her children, supporting them all by running a lodging house. Mrs Collins' experience of abuse did not only shape the chilling psychodrama of Wuthering Heights. There are echoes of Patrick's advice in Emily's sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre (1847), and her eponymous heroine's famous declaration of autonomy: 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.' Mrs Collins' strength and resilience also inspires the bravery of Helen Huntingdon in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Like Emily's 'eternal rocks,' coercive control lurks beneath the Brontës' best-loved fictions, warning Victorian readers of the terrifyingly real dangers of psychological abuse long before the law caught up. Katy Mullin, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, University of Leeds. Hannah Roche, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, University of York. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
