Latest news with #TheCrown
Global News
an hour ago
- Global News
Family of man killed in boat accident shows up in court to face accused
Dressed in all black, more than two dozen of Codey Daly's loved ones showed up to the Valleyfield courthouse Thursday morning to face the man accused of killing the 29-year-old last summer. Last August, Alexander Paliotti allegedly reversed his boat trailer into his driveway, crushing his longtime friend after spending the day on the boat. He was arrested and later charged with impaired driving causing death. In court, the defence lawyer argued that they need more time to review the evidence before submitting a plea. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The Crown and the judge agreed to the extension. 'To put Codey's family through this, to put us through this, to come back here when a stance could have easily been taken sooner — even before today — is insulting,' said Noa Almaleh, Codey's girlfriend. Story continues below advertisement 'It just goes to show that they're playing with his capabilities and his rights, using it in his favour, rather than taking accountability.' The judge also ruled that Paliotti will get his driver's licence back, under certain conditions. Paliotti was not in court on Thursday, though he was not required to be by law. The case will return to court on Oct. 7. The judge made it a point to insist Paliotti be present for the hearing. For the full story watch the video above.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path
'I have played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,' says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. 'These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it's of interest to me.' There is steering in another direction, and then there is the screeching handbrake turn represented by her role in The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn's 2018 memoir of homelessness and hope along the coastline of England's south-west. Playing Winn, Anderson is shown making a single teabag stretch for several cuppas, withdrawing the final £1.38 from her bank account, and warming her blistered feet by a pub fire. A typical day begins with her peeing in the undergrowth. It's a far cry from Agent Scully in The X-Files. Winn's response to a double catastrophe in her life in 2013 was to embark on the lengthy South West Coast Path walk with her husband, Moth. The film's opening scene shows the couple's tent being flooded during a King Lear-level storm. A flashback then reveals how they ended up in this sorry, soggy state. A bad investment left them saddled with crippling debts and the couple lost the farm in Wales where they had brought up their now-adult children. While cowering in the hallway from bailiffs, Winn took inspiration from a cherished book glimpsed among their partly packed belongings: Five Hundred Mile Walkies, in which Mark Wallington recounts the trek he and his dog took around the south-west. He must have miscalculated the journey, however. It is in fact 630 miles, including many steep ascents and descents. And as if penury and homelessness were not challenging enough, Moth had recently been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, corticobasal syndrome, and advised by doctors to rest. Stairs, he was told, would be particularly problematic. Twelve years and those 630 miles later, Moth Winn is, miraculously, still alive. He is played in the film by Jason Isaacs, who sits beside his screen wife today in a London hotel room. Their contrasting body language is instantly revealing. The 56-year-old Anderson, friendly but with a casually authoritative aura, is perched side-saddle in her chair, one leg crossed away from me, so that she seems almost to be looking back over her shoulder in my direction as she speaks. Isaacs, 61, leans forward, elbows on knees, keen to get stuck in. It is as if they are still playing their parts from The Salt Path: Raynor Winn, with her patina of reserve and caution, and Moth, eager to make sure everyone else is comfortable, a people-pleaser even when the people aren't worth pleasing, as some of those they meet on their travels manifestly are not. A passerby berates them for wild camping, beating their tent with his stick. In a scene that hasn't made it from page to screen, Winn is humiliated by a woman who spots her scrambling on the ground for dropped coins and assumes she is drunk. Despite those flashes of conflict, Winn had doubts about how her story would work on screen. 'It's about two people and a path,' she tells me from the home she and Moth now share in Cornwall. 'I couldn't grasp how that could be a film.' But Marianne Elliott, the acclaimed stage director of War Horse, Angels in America, and Company, makes her screen directing debut here and tells me she always saw The Salt Path as inherently cinematic. 'Ray and Moth hardly talk on their walk,' she says. 'They are carrying their trauma on their back, but then they slowly calm down and start to look up and engage with the majestic landscapes. And they are changed by it. It felt like nature was playing with them, like a wild beast – sometimes giving them beauty and wonder, and sometimes battering them cruelly. They were reformed by the elements, if you like.' Playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who adapted The Salt Path for the screen, says she saw nature as the key to unlocking the film version. 'Any reservations were about the walking,' she says. 'You know: how do we make walking dynamic for that amount of time? It felt like we needed almost to take the weather and the landscape as a character. It needed to be a film with a lot of silence. It's not some chatty, walky comedy.' Watching Isaacs trudging across English landscapes, however magnificent, feels incongruous after all those scenes of him suffering existential despair in luxurious five-star surroundings in the Thailand-set third season of The White Lotus. I assume he will be heartily sick of talking about the series by now, but it is he who brings up the similarity between the characters he plays. 'They're both men who lose everything. And they react in very different ways, which is a measure of who they are.' His character in The White Lotus was prone to suicidal ideations. So, too, was the apparently upbeat Moth. 'He laughs all the time, even when he's describing the toll his disease has taken on him. But he felt suicidal on the walk. He and Ray were crippled with shame, and the future was this abyss for them. They hid that from one another. They constantly made each other laugh. Acting is a game of pretend, and that's what they were both doing.' What were Anderson's first impressions of Raynor? 'I was surprised at how guarded she was,' she says. 'Of course, it must be strange: you've got two relatively famous actors who are going to play you showing up at your house. But it was interesting to encounter a certain steeliness. It was informative for me to see that.' 'You can be quite steely,' Isaacs says. 'You've got that in you.' 'Oh, definitely,' she agrees. 'I know that about myself.' Having been surprised when her memoir was optioned, Winn says she was even more taken aback by the casting. 'I remember thinking, 'How is that going to work? How will someone so perfect and glamorous capture me in that raw state?'' Things got even more confusing when she told Moth the news. 'He thought I meant Pamela Anderson.' During the first meeting between the four of them, the Winns explained to the actors the details of how they packed, knowing that they couldn't take more than what could be carried on their backs. 'Then they put the tent up for us right there in the living room,' Isaacs says. 'I'm not sure if I'd … ever … camped … before,' says Anderson, stringing the words out as though anticipating derision. 'You'd never pitched a tent?' asks Isaacs in mild disbelief. 'Not as far as I can remember,' she says. 'I might have pitched one for my kids in the back garden.' Isaacs says he is 'all about climbing things, jumping off things, swimming through things. Canyons and stuff. I like extreme physical experiences. Even at my advanced age, I see something and I think, 'That'd be fun to climb up. Or slide down.' I'm still a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 100-year-old body.' As a child, he went wild camping with his family in Wales. 'We'd get woken by farmers. Or livestock.' Once, they parked in heavy fog on a small hill and pitched their tent. 'You couldn't see your hand in front of you. We woke up to find we'd camped on a roundabout.' Anderson gasps and claps her hands: 'That's such a good story!' The Salt Path began life as a diary that Winn kept on the walk, and which she later wrote up as a gift for Moth – and, more urgently, as a way of preserving the experience for him as his memory began to fade. That diary spawned a Big Issue article and then a book, nominated for the Costa prize in 2018. The judges called it 'an absolutely brilliant story that needs to be told about the human capacity to endure and keep putting one foot in front of another'. The picture will doubtless reignite interest in the South West Coast Path, and attract more walkers after a recent downturn. To anyone tempted to wonder whether walking is having 'a moment', what with the film of The Salt Path following David Nicholls's novel You Are Here (about a friendship that blooms on a 200-mile coast-to-coast hike across the north of England), it is as well to remember that what the Winns did was born out desperation. They found beauty and a kind of salvation, and the walk even seemed to help Moth to defy his doctors' prognosis, but it was often a ghastly, hardscrabble journey. 'They were desperate and lonely and scared,' says Isaacs. 'They wanted to avoid towns because they got treated badly there and they had no money to buy food. They were happier by themselves away from people. They experienced both sides of human nature: tremendous compassion and generosity but also abuse and neglect. They were frightened of the police and of anyone who would come along and dehumanise them just because they were homeless. Though the book itself was a love letter to Moth, there's a marked lack of sentimentality when they speak about what happened. They got all kinds of different benefits from the walk but they still wanted a warm roof over their heads.' One thing that is impossible to capture on screen, he says, is their persistent hunger. 'It colours everything. We do our best to tell the story but that's a physical ache. They would stand at cafe windows watching people eat.' Anderson is nodding along. 'Ray talks in the book about pretending to eat, and how the fantasy of eating, the act of moving the mouth, does half the job,' she says. Winn tells me that living below the breadline has altered her for ever. 'It changes how you feel about material things,' she says. 'Having let go of everything we had, possessions don't concern me in the same way they did before. Anything that doesn't enrich your life just gets in the way. The stuff we gather can easily start to control us.' Winn says her life is much as it ever was, though Moth now tires more easily, and requires extensive physiotherapy. 'Except without the worry of paying the rent.' As the author of several bestselling books, does she allow herself the occasional luxury these days? 'I do,' she sighs. 'Sometimes it's nice to have the whole pasty instead of just half.' The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
Toronto Star
10 hours ago
- Sport
- Toronto Star
‘I'm 19 years old and there's a naked girl in the room': Accused player Carter Hart testifies at Hockey Canada sex assault trial
If something 'disrespectful or degrading' happened while he was in a London, Ont., hotel room with a woman demanding to have sex with his teammates, Carter Hart says he would have stopped it or left. 'I can't see why I would have stayed in that room,' he testified Thursday, becoming the first accused player at the high-profile Hockey Canada sexual assault trial to take the stand in his own defence after the prosecution closed its case on Thursday. Canada The prosecution has closed. Here's how to understand the Crown's case in the Hockey Canada sex assault trial The Crown completed its evidence at the Hockey Canada sex assault trial on Thursday morning. Here's what you need to know to catch up, starting Canada The prosecution has closed. Here's how to understand the Crown's case in the Hockey Canada sex assault trial The Crown completed its evidence at the Hockey Canada sex assault trial on Thursday morning. Here's what you need to know to catch up, starting Hart, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote, all former members of the 2018 Canadian world junior championship team, have pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the then-20-year-old woman in a room at the Delta Armouries hotel in the early hours of June 19, 2018. McLeod has also pleaded not guilty to being a party to a sexual assault for allegedly encouraging his teammates to engage in sexual activity with the woman when he knew she wasn't consenting. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The complainant, whose identity is covered by a standard publication ban, had met McLeod at Jack's Bar and went back to his hotel where they had consensual sex, only for multiple members of the team to come in afterward, prompted by texts from McLeod. Testifying over nine days, the woman alleged the men placed a bedsheet on the floor and asked her to fondle herself, to perform oral sex on them while she was slapped and spat on, and to engage in vaginal intercourse. While she never said no nor physically resisted, the woman said she adopted the 'persona' of a 'porn star' and engaged in the sexual activity as a coping mechanism while being in a room surrounded by men she didn't know. Hart, who played as a goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers prior to his arrest, confirmed Thursday at the judge-alone trial under cross-examination by Formenton's lawyer, Hilary Dudding, that he never saw anyone spit on the complainant, nor mock or bully her, as she has testified. If he had: 'I would have said 'don't do that' or 'stop' or I would have just left.' Players Alex Formenton and Carter Hart arrive back at the Delta Armouries hotel early on June 19, 2018, with teammate Rob Thomas. Ontario Superior Court exhibit What he did see when he entered McLeod's room after a night of drinking was a naked woman masturbating on a bedsheet on the floor, asking the players around her: 'Can somebody come f—- me?' How were you feeling about that, Hart's lawyer, Megan Savard, asked him at the start of his testimony. 'Pretty excited,' said Hart, dressed in a burgundy suit and blue tie. 'I'm 19 years old and there's a naked girl in the room that was doing these things willingly. It was something I'd never seen before.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW He said he believed most of the men didn't want to have sex with the woman because they had girlfriends. Hart himself wasn't open to having intercourse, so testified that he asked instead: 'Can I get a blowie?' 'Meaning blowjob,' he clarified in his testimony. He said he recalled the woman saying something like 'yeah' or 'sure' as he walked toward her on the bedsheet, while she got up on her knees and moved toward him, grabbing his penis over the top of his pants and helping him to pull them down. The oral sex lasted about 30 seconds to a minute, as Hart said he couldn't get erect and was starting to feel uncomfortable. 'It was just a weird thing,' he said. 'There were other guys in the room looking and I do remember making eye contact with somebody. It was just, like, weird.' Hart maintained that his sexual contact with the complainant was consensual, and that he was in the room for about an hour. Just prior to the start of Hart's testimony on Thursday, the prosecution closed its case, one that primarily relies on the testimony of the complainant. Given that she couldn't identify most of the men who engaged with her, including Hart, the Crown also relied on the testimony of other players in the room who were not accused of any wrongdoing, to put names to alleged actions. But those witnesses also ended up posing challenges for the Crown, such as player Brett Howden, who agreed with a defence suggestion that what he saw in the room was '100 per cent consensual.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW A composite image of London police Det. Steve Newton's handwritten notes on the complainant's comments during a June 26, 2018, photo-identification interview. Ontario Superior Court Exhibit The world juniors were in London at the time to attend the Hockey Canada Foundation's annual Gala & Golf fundraising event and to receive their rings for winning the championship earlier that year. Hart's visit to McLeod's room was prompted by a text McLeod sent to a players' group chat just after 2 a.m. on June 19: 'Who wants to be in 3 way quick.' Hart replied within minutes: 'I'm in.' He testified Thursday he also spoke to McLeod on the phone. 'I do remember the gist of the conversation was Mike was with a girl back at the hotel that wanted to have sex with some of the boys,' Hart testified. 'Boys meaning some of my teammates.' McLeod himself will not be testifying at the trial, his lawyer David Humphrey confirmed in court Thursday, especially given the fact that the Crown already entered as evidence his video statement to police in 2018. In that interview, McLeod maintains that his sexual contact with the complainant was consensual and that she was demanding to have sex with players, and becoming upset when they wouldn't take her up on her offer. But McLeod also omits that he texted his teammates to come to his room for sexual activity. It remains to be seen whether Formenton, Dubé, and Foote will testify. They are not required to, as the burden of proving a criminal charge always remains with the Crown. Aside from the oral sex allegation against Hart, the Crown has also alleged that McLeod had intercourse with the woman a second time in the bathroom; Formenton separately had intercourse with her in the bathroom; McLeod and Dubé obtained oral sex; Dubé slapped her naked buttocks, and Foote did the splits over her body and his genitals 'grazed' her face. Hart testified he didn't witness most of what the Crown is alleging; he confirmed he didn't see anyone slap the complainant. He also recalled the woman and Formenton holding hands as they made their way to the bathroom. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'She was the one, not dragging him, but leading him into the bathroom,' he said. And he recalled Foote doing the splits over the woman's body while she was lying on the sheet on the floor between the two beds, but said Foote was clothed and that he didn't touch her body. Hart explained that the splits were a 'pretty cool thing' that Foote was able to do upon request; surveillance footage shows he did the splits on the dancefloor at Jack's earlier that night. Men in the hotel room were egging him on to do it again, Hart said. 'Like hey Footer, do the splits,' Hart said. 'That was just kind of a thing he did. He's a big, tall dude, super flexible.' He said everyone was laughing after Foote did the splits over the complainant — 'and I looked and I saw (the complainant) was laughing as well.' Cal Foote does the splits at Jack's Bar in London on the night of June 18-19, 2018, while teammates Brett Howden (on the far side of Foote, in white with a lighter-coloured backwards ball cap) and Dillon Dubé (in white on the near side of Foote) clear space on the dance floor. Ontario Superior Court exhibit Days later, on June 26, 2018, fear and panic set in among the team after they learned that Hockey Canada was looking into reports of an alleged sexual assault in the hotel room. They furiously texted each other back and forth in a group chat entered as evidence at the trial, with McLeod emphasizing that they should tell the truth and not make anything up. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'Honestly boys nobody did anything wrong,' Hart chimed in from Philadelphia, where he was at hockey development camp. 'Like we got consent to anything that she did, she was the one begging guys to bang her.' Savard asked her client for his understanding of the purpose of the text thread. 'I thought everybody was just telling the truth,' he said. 'Like there's nothing to hide, that we're just agreeing to tell the truth.' Messages from Carter Hart, in blue, from the player's group chat on June 26, 2018. Ontario Superior Court exhibit London police initially declined to lay charges in 2019 after the lead investigator wondered whether the complainant had been an 'active participant' in the room; Hockey Canada also shut down its probe after the complainant refused to participate. Both the organization and the police force reopened their investigations in 2022 amid intense public pressure after Hockey Canada settled, for an undisclosed sum, a $3.5-million sexual assault lawsuit filed by the complainant against the organization and eight unnamed John Doe players. The five men on trial were charged in 2024. Hockey Canada didn't tell the players of their intention to settle, nor that a claim had even been filed. Hart was playing tennis with his best friend when he found out. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Canada Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with Canada Why didn't police lay charges in 2019? Inside the London police investigations in the Hockey Canada sex assault case London police documents make clear the high-profile sex assault investigation was reopened in 2022 due to 'a resurgence in media attention' — with 'I'll never forget the day,' he testified. 'I received a phone call from my agent telling me that Hockey Canada had settled on behalf of us without our knowledge or consent to the complainant, and that Hockey Canada was going to be reopening their investigation, and the police.' And so Hockey Canada never told you about this lawsuit, Savard pressed her client. 'No, I had been asked to even play for Team Canada that year,' Hart said. 'I had no idea.' Crown attorney Meaghan Cunningham will begin cross-examining Hart on Friday morning.
North Wales Chronicle
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
Child victims of Gaza onslaught remembered in Westminster vigil
Actors including Steve Coogan and Juliet Stevenson stood in the shadow of the Elizabeth Tower to help read out the names of more than 16,000 children as part of the Choose Love-organised campaign to 'honour' those killed in the last 19 months. Later, they described what is happening as a genocide and said that people should stand up and protest if they do not agree with what the UK Government is doing to try and stop it. Coogan said he was took part to 'highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza who are having their aid blocked'. He said: 'I am here to bring attention to that, and not only that, but the lives of all the children who have been lost in this conflict, in this bombing which has been largely indiscriminate bombing. 'It is to shine light on the fact that these were real people, real children and they should be remembered. 'We are reading out the names to remember them as human beings and not just a statistic. 'I don't know these children of course, but when you read the name, you realise they were someone who had a life, albeit a short one and had nothing to do with the conflict. 'They were the innocent victims of the conflict, and that the vast majority of the families had nothing to do with this conflict, even where their families did, it doesn't justify that kind of response.' He described what is happening as 'not only immoral, it's illegal under international law, and lots of mainstream news outlets would rather this went away and would rather ignore it'. Up to 16,000 names, of children under 18 who are confirmed dead were read and up to 20,000 children are also reported as missing, the organisers said. The readers stood in front of a banner which read: 'Gaza: Actions Not Words'. It was made up of the names of 1,700 babies, who are one year old or younger, who who have been confirmed as dead. Each speaker, including actors Toby Jones, Emily Watson and Andrea Riseborough plus presenters Dawn O'Porter and Nadia Sawalha, read out approximately 300 names. Coogan also said it is 'appalling' the press have not been allowed into the war zone for 18 months to report on what is happening, saying 'if they had nothing to hide, they would let the press in. On Thursday Stevenson said: 'It is every child who name we know but, of course, there are so many children whose names we don't know who are buried under the rubble. 'Every child whose name is known is being read because they are not numbers. 'Each child that has been killed, had a name, a family, had passions, had loves and fears as do all our children. 'There is no difference and they now have had their lives taken away. 'It is a genocide and I have just been horrified by what has been going on.' The organisers are calling for a halt to arms sales and export licences to Israel, full humanitarian access to Gaza and a commitment to an immediate and lasting ceasefire 'to end the starvation and slaughter of children'. Khalid Abdalla, who played Dodi Fayed in The Crown, described the vigil as 'a very moving tribute to the number of children who have been killed, there's an ongoing genocide'. He added: 'It's heartbreaking that each of these children only gets to have their names for them as you read the names you have just about touched on the world of who they might have been. 'I was reading for half an hour almost, and all the children's names that I read out were five years old. 'I was hoping I would get to a change in number. 'There was no change in number. 'The point is thousands upon thousands of children have died and we don't even know the final number because it is ongoing.' The vigil comes after more than 300 actors, musicians, activists and others used an open letter to call on the Prime Minister to 'take immediate action to end the UK's complicity in the horrors of Gaza'. As well as suspending UK arms sales to Israel, the group urged Sir Keir to 'use all available means' to ensure humanitarian aid gets into the territory and 'make a commitment to the children of Gaza' that he would broker an 'immediate and permanent ceasefire'. Signatories included Gary Lineker, who left his role presenting Match Of The Day earlier this month following a controversy over one of his social media posts about the conflict in Gaza, actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Brian Cox, along with Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlin, singers Paloma Faith and Annie Lennox, plus Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. A Government spokesman previously said: 'We strongly oppose the expansion of military operations in Gaza and call on the Israeli Government to cease its offensive and immediately allow for unfettered access to humanitarian aid. 'The denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Gaza is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. 'Last year, we suspended export licences to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza and continue to refuse licences for military goods that could be used by Israel in the current conflict. 'We urge all parties to urgently agree a ceasefire agreement and work towards a permanent and sustainable peace.'
Rhyl Journal
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Child victims of Gaza onslaught remembered in Westminster vigil
Actors including Steve Coogan and Juliet Stevenson stood in the shadow of the Elizabeth Tower to help read out the names of more than 16,000 children as part of the Choose Love-organised campaign to 'honour' those killed in the last 19 months. Later, they described what is happening as a genocide and said that people should stand up and protest if they do not agree with what the UK Government is doing to try and stop it. Coogan said he was took part to 'highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza who are having their aid blocked'. He said: 'I am here to bring attention to that, and not only that, but the lives of all the children who have been lost in this conflict, in this bombing which has been largely indiscriminate bombing. 'It is to shine light on the fact that these were real people, real children and they should be remembered. 'We are reading out the names to remember them as human beings and not just a statistic. 'I don't know these children of course, but when you read the name, you realise they were someone who had a life, albeit a short one and had nothing to do with the conflict. 'They were the innocent victims of the conflict, and that the vast majority of the families had nothing to do with this conflict, even where their families did, it doesn't justify that kind of response.' He described what is happening as 'not only immoral, it's illegal under international law, and lots of mainstream news outlets would rather this went away and would rather ignore it'. Up to 16,000 names, of children under 18 who are confirmed dead were read and up to 20,000 children are also reported as missing, the organisers said. The readers stood in front of a banner which read: 'Gaza: Actions Not Words'. It was made up of the names of 1,700 babies, who are one year old or younger, who who have been confirmed as dead. Each speaker, including actors Toby Jones, Emily Watson and Andrea Riseborough plus presenters Dawn O'Porter and Nadia Sawalha, read out approximately 300 names. Coogan also said it is 'appalling' the press have not been allowed into the war zone for 18 months to report on what is happening, saying 'if they had nothing to hide, they would let the press in. On Thursday Stevenson said: 'It is every child who name we know but, of course, there are so many children whose names we don't know who are buried under the rubble. 'Every child whose name is known is being read because they are not numbers. 'Each child that has been killed, had a name, a family, had passions, had loves and fears as do all our children. 'There is no difference and they now have had their lives taken away. 'It is a genocide and I have just been horrified by what has been going on.' The organisers are calling for a halt to arms sales and export licences to Israel, full humanitarian access to Gaza and a commitment to an immediate and lasting ceasefire 'to end the starvation and slaughter of children'. Khalid Abdalla, who played Dodi Fayed in The Crown, described the vigil as 'a very moving tribute to the number of children who have been killed, there's an ongoing genocide'. He added: 'It's heartbreaking that each of these children only gets to have their names for them as you read the names you have just about touched on the world of who they might have been. 'I was reading for half an hour almost, and all the children's names that I read out were five years old. 'I was hoping I would get to a change in number. 'There was no change in number. 'The point is thousands upon thousands of children have died and we don't even know the final number because it is ongoing.' The vigil comes after more than 300 actors, musicians, activists and others used an open letter to call on the Prime Minister to 'take immediate action to end the UK's complicity in the horrors of Gaza'. As well as suspending UK arms sales to Israel, the group urged Sir Keir to 'use all available means' to ensure humanitarian aid gets into the territory and 'make a commitment to the children of Gaza' that he would broker an 'immediate and permanent ceasefire'. Signatories included Gary Lineker, who left his role presenting Match Of The Day earlier this month following a controversy over one of his social media posts about the conflict in Gaza, actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Brian Cox, along with Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlin, singers Paloma Faith and Annie Lennox, plus Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. A Government spokesman previously said: 'We strongly oppose the expansion of military operations in Gaza and call on the Israeli Government to cease its offensive and immediately allow for unfettered access to humanitarian aid. 'The denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Gaza is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. 'Last year, we suspended export licences to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza and continue to refuse licences for military goods that could be used by Israel in the current conflict. 'We urge all parties to urgently agree a ceasefire agreement and work towards a permanent and sustainable peace.'
