
The world watched on as four astronauts on the 10-day Artemis II mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off California on Friday
Continue reading...Stardom came fast and hard for the wunderkind who created the hit HBO series Girls aged just 23. Now she’s written a tell-all memoir about why she was forced to retreat from the spotlight
• Lena Dunham on going to rehab: read an exclusive extract from Famesick
If there is something to be learned from the words people pick for their passwords and proxies, then Lena Dunham’s choice of aliases – pseudonyms that, as a public person, she has used over the years to conceal her identity when checking into rehab or ordering room service – give us a tiny glimpse into the writer and director’s self-image. Among her staples, “Lauri Reynolds” (after her mum, Laurie, with whom she is strikingly close); “Rose O’Neill” (after the American millionaire illustrator, who lost her fortune to burnout and hangers-on); and my favourite, “Renata Halpern”, an alias Dunham shares with readers of her delicious new memoir, Famesick, without explaining the name’s origin.
“Has anyone else clocked the Renata Halpern reference?” I ask Dunham, who is in her apartment in New York, talking fast via video call while waiting for an egg-and-cheese bagel to be run up from the deli. On the brink of 40, she is in her dark-haired era – very Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – which, this morning, is set against a bright orange shirt and the pale, glowy skin she describes as the single happy side-effect of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition of the connective tissue with which Dunham was diagnosed in 2019. Later this month, she’ll return to London, where she has lived for the last five years with her husband, Luis Felber, and where she enjoys greater anonymity than in her native New York – although, she says, not enough to dispense with the aliases. (“Just when you think no one cares, someone does something creepy, so you have to watch out.”)
Continue reading...An unmissable book for every year of your early life – with recommendations from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Katherine Rundell and more
The news about reading in general, and childhood reading in particular, is not good. Last year a National Literacy Trust survey of more than 100,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 discovered that the number of children who read for pleasure is the lowest since records of this sort began. Only about a third of children say they actively enjoy reading, and the number who report reading daily in their free time is has halved over the last two decades. It’s down to less than one in five.
Whether we blame this on screens, social media, or on a renewed enthusiasm for healthy outdoor activities, the facts are clear. Children are reading less, taking less pleasure in doing so, and there’s already talk of the dawning of a “post-literate age”. Yet books make available the best, wisest and most beautiful things that humankind has conceived, and children’s literature offers a host of classics, old and new, to be introduced to new generations of readers.
Continue reading...Corruption scandals and a surging opposition have turned the vote into the biggest test yet for the long-serving populist leader
The drone footage showed a sprawling residence in northern Hungary, complete with manicured gardens, a swimming pool and an underground garage. But it was what came next that captured much of the country’s imagination: zebras darting across the countryside.
Continue reading...Jack, 31, a nature consultant, meets Heather, 23, who works in marketing for a homelessness charity
What were you hoping for?
A nice evening, to meet someone new and see what type of person I would be matched up with.
Fanning is a young single mother who makes adult content in this hilarious series. It is smart, sexy and bold – and Pfeiffer is unmissable as her ex-Hooters-waitress mother
I promise, it’s the title that drew me in. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a new Apple TV show (out Wednesday), starring Elle Fanning as a single mum who becomes an OnlyFans model. It joins a niche canon of similarly blunt titles about generic obstacles. To wit: Fleishman Is in Trouble; Big Trouble in Little China. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is better, though. Check out the assonance, the rhythm. It has great mouthfeel, to borrow a word from food reviewing, one I instantly regret.
Our hero, Margo Millet, is a first-year college student who falls pregnant by her professor. The married academic tells her to get an abortion; her friends agree with him. She has the baby. She drops out of college, falls into money troubles. She attempts to fall out of them by joining the notorious content creation platform. She does nude video shoots, in the character of a sexy alien. If none of this inflames you, can I interest you in Nick Offerman as Margo’s pro-wrestler, drug-addicted father? Or Michelle Pfeiffer as her blue collar, ex-Hooters-waitress mother? No? Are you dead?
Continue reading...Tehran insists a Lebanon truce and unfreezing of its assets must be granted before negotiations can start
JD Vance warns Iran against trying to ‘play’ the US in peace talks
Analysis: JD Vance dispatched to peace talks with few cards to play
The UK will host a strait of Hormuz meeting next week, bringing together multiple countries aiming to restore free movement of ships through the strait, which has been blockaded by Iran since the beginning of the war and inflicted heavy damage on the global economy.
A British official told AP that the meeting will oppose the idea of tolls being charged for passage through the waterway, as proposed by Iran as part of ceasefire negotiations.
Continue reading...The four astronauts touched down on Earth off the coast of California, concluding historic 10-day mission
The Artemis II, and the four astronauts aboard the Orion space capsule, splashed down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Friday night, with all four astronauts in good health.
“53 years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay. Let us finish what they started. Let us focus on what was left undone. Let us not go to plant flags and leave, but to stay with firmness in our purpose, with gratitude for the hands who built the machines and with love for the ones that we carry with us,” Nasa’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said at the late-night press conference after the astronauts landed.
Continue reading...Officials accept that time has run out to pass law after US dropped its support for plan
The UK government has been forced to shelve its legislation to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, after the US dropped its support for the agreement.
On Friday, UK government officials acknowledged that they had run out of time to pass legislation within the current parliamentary session, which ends in the coming weeks.
Continue reading...Chris Kempczinski’s taste test was mocked online, to which he said his mother had taught him: ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full’
The chief executive officer of McDonald’s recently blamed etiquette guidance from his mother for a February on-camera taste test that made him a target for ridicule – and summarily recorded another video of him eating one of the fast-food giant’s offerings in a manner potential consumers found awkward.
Chris Kempczinski suggested to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) earlier in April that he was simply heeding maternal advice to never talk with his mouth full when he took the humorously small bite at the center of a viral video which depicted him discussing and sampling the new Big Arch burger from McDonald’s.
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