Clinton is holding his glasses, I definitely didn't forget to draw them in the first panel

Pukeko Pictures, founded by Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger with their friend and children’s author Martin Baynton, has released a free children’s ebook. The book is based on characters from the New Zealand kids’ show Kiddets and demonstrates to children the importance of remaining clean, clear, and kind. You can download a copy […]

"Mad Mike" Hughes, a self-styled explorer and daredevil bent on proving that the earth is flat was killed over the weekend when his homemade rocket crashed in the California desert over the weekend.

Worried about whether you have enough toilet paper for the coronavirus lockdown? A German website can tell you how long your supply will last.

Dressed as "Star Wars" characters, local officials in the Philippines are out and about to enforce strict quarantine measures while also handing out relief packages.

A trooper stopping a car with a suspected "impaired driver" on a U.S. highway on Monday was bemused to find a 5-year-old in the driver's seat, the Utah Highway Patrol tweeted.

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Dennis the Menace, 5/9/20 I guess the flavor of mence that’s supposed to be happening here is that […]

In this week's Pagan Community Notes, Pagan Spirit Gathering has been canceled, indigenous shaman and actor Antonio Bolivar joins the Ancestors, Sacred Well announces changes in leadership, and more!

Continue reading Pagan Community Notes: PSG 2020 canceled, leadership change within Sacred Well, indigenous shaman and actor Antonio Bolivar crosses Veil, and more! at The Wild Hunt.

A sinkhole that has opened up near the Pantheon offers a chance for researchers to examine travertine slabs that date back to Roman antiquity.

Continue reading Sinkhole near the Pantheon shines a light on ancient slabs at The Wild Hunt.

I hope nobody you know is sick right now. I hope it’s, at worst, a common cold, common boredom bred by self-quarantine, or a stubbed toe because you tried some ridiculous workout video you found online. Or, if you’re me, last week, after yet another thing fell out of my chaotic freezer onto my foot (I don’t even get to blame “fitness”) I decided to, what’s that word, it feels so unnatural to type… organize? Right, that. I decided to sift through the freezer and see what was taking up so much space and I realized that Deb Of A Few Months (let’s be honest: probably longer) Ago did a very cool thing and made an excess of chicken stock and froze it in one-quart bags which meant that “wohoo! dinner is sorted!”

Read more »

I’m really enjoying Lukas Volger’s new cookbook, Start Simple: Eleven Everyday Ingredients for Countless Weeknight Meals. It came out two months ago, a positively bizarre time in which we entered and left our homes with abandon, casually hugged friends we were happy to see, and if our nose became itchy, we’d scratch it and not stand paralyzed in panic afterward. What salad days! Volger’s new book wasn’t created with pandemic cooking in mind — what was, really — but it feels just right for right now because each chapter focuses on a staple our local store is miraculously not out of (tofu, tortillas, beans, greens, squash, and more), and the recipes have refreshingly short ingredient lists and unfussy assemblies. Volger’s vegetarian cooking is very doable, the kind of do-ability that comes from the fact that this is clearly the food he cooks for himself at home, so all of the kinks are smoothed out. Everything sounds so good — smoky chickpea salad with olives and lemon and black beans with scallion-lime vinaigrette from the bean section are on my shortlist — you might find yourself wondering why this unwavering simplicity isn’t the goal of every cookbook.

Read more »

I didn’t know I needed a new roast chicken in my life when Helen Rosner, the New Yorker’s roving food correspondent and all-around fascinating person, posted on her Instagram a few weekends ago that she didn’t have her usual vegetables to put under her roast chicken so she was using cabbage instead. Yet the very next evening, so was I, plus twice since then, and likely one more time before this week is out and I have a hunch I will not be alone. Rosner won a James Beard award for an essay I still routinely quote from to my kids (“but chicken tenders have no terroir!” because we live in opposite land where they don’t like them but I do — but that’s a whole other blog entry) because it delights me so much. A year ago she nearly broke the internet when she said she likes to use a hairdryer to get the crispiest chicken skin. All I’m saying is that when Rosner talks about chicken, I find good reason to tune in.

Read more »

Full Article

Determined to find an uplifting moment every day, the Yorkshire photographer Rebecca Cole has been in search of images that bring spring to her family and friends in lockdown. She has been sharing a daily image with them via Blipfoto for the last six and a half years, but photographing nature has provided a particularly welcome escape in recent weeks

Cutting short our holiday to Cuba as Covid-19 took off, it was an eerie feeling transferring through an emptying Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in the middle of the day with the shutters down on duty free. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got home but, while life felt uncertain, I knew my wildlife - my haven - would still be there. The countryside around Burley-in-Wharfedale, my home, has become my daily sanctuary, now more than ever.

Continue reading...

The photographer Olivia Harris has been seeking out the sun worshippers of London making the best of their front stoops, balconies, window ledges and gardens, and finding out how they are managing under lockdown

Continue reading...

Second member of banned folk group dies in country where few political protest options remain

İbrahim Gökçek died at an Istanbul hospital after almost a year on hunger strike protesting against the detention of his wife, Sultan. She was still in prison, rather than at his side, when he died in intensive care on Thursday, two days after abandoning his strike.

Gökçek, a bass guitarist, is the second member of the banned left-wing folk music band Grup Yorum to die in just over a month after launching hunger strikes over the Turkish state’s treatment of their band: 28-year-old Helin Bölek, a singer, died on 3 April after 288 days of fasting.

Continue reading...

A weekday lunch of braised chickpeas, a savoury brunch porridge and a grown-up take on rice pudding

The world has seen more than its fair share of closed doors lately – shops, restaurants, the barber, your neighbours’ – but that has, in turn, led to the opening of some others.

And if there is one door that has swung wide open in recent weeks, it’s the one that leads into the kitchen. From the keenest of cooks to the humblest of beginners, the kitchen has provided us all with the one thing we’ve been missing the most: freedom.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus has robbed the Democrat of his typical back-slapping approach as he faces growing scrutiny and a third-party challenge

The Tampa, Florida, rally for Joe Biden on Thursday evening began as it normally might have, before a once-in-a-century pandemic transformed all aspects of American life, including the presidential campaign. A local high school student recited the pledge of allegiance, a campaign organizer pleaded with supporters to volunteer and a local DJ spun R&B music between speakers.

But in a sign of how profoundly the coronavirus crisis has reshaped American politics, that was where the similarities ended.

Continue reading...

Senior health official says virus exposed ‘weak links’ in way country manages epidemics

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

China will reform its disease prevention and control system to address weaknesses exposed by the coronavirus outbreak, a senior health official has said.

China has been criticised domestically and abroad for being initially slow to react to the outbreak, which started in Wuhan. The virus has now infected almost 4 million people around the world, and almost 250,0000 people have died from the Covid-19 disease it causes.

Continue reading...

Nadarajah Nithiyakumar held in custody after being discharged from hospital

A father has been charged with murdering his two young children at the family home.

Pavinya Nithiyakumar, aged 19 months, and Nigash Nithiyakumar, who was three years old, suffered fatal knife wounds at their house in Ilford, east London, on 26 April.

Continue reading...

The UK may no longer be an EU member but, as the current health crisis shows, cooperation continues to be essential

• Coronavirus shows British–EU solidarity vital, say ambassadors

On Saturday, for the first time in almost 50 years, we observe Europe Day without the United Kingdom as a member state of the European Union. As ambassadors and high commissioners representing the EU and its 27 countries in the UK, we are nonetheless very keen to mark the date with all the citizens of this great country and with the millions of EU nationals who live and work in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

We celebrate Europe on 9 May because on this same day in 1950, exactly 70 years ago, in the aftermath of the devastating second world war, Robert Schuman, the Luxembourg-born foreign minister of France, laid the foundations of our collective endeavour. He said then: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”

Continue reading...

Resuming the season is absurd and the ‘safety’ ideas are terrible, but whatever football decides it must decide together

“You eat alone, you choke.” During the years of plenty it became a habit to compare the Premier League’s wielding of power – always with a note of admiration – to the structures of a mafia family.

It isn’t hard to see why: the hierarchy of captains, the beautifully ruthless sense of unity, of a cartel of self-propelling interests. And yet the thing about mafia families is that now and then those interests start pulling in different ways. In mob lore breaking ranks is sometimes referred to as “eating alone”, with a certainty that bad things follow – and worst of all that bad business follows.

Continue reading...

It is among the most international of sports, but countries have had to look inwardly in order to restart the action

On Thursday afternoon in Minsk, elite international athletes returned to competition. Two Belarusians kicked tennis off as the world No 11, Aryna Sabalenka, and the No 50, Aliaksandra Sasnovich, took to the court. Even in Belarus, where the country has relentlessly carried on as much of the world around it has come to a halt, the scene underlined the new normal.

The pair humbled themselves to picking up their own balls and their stage was a small indoor hard court lined with one linesman per side and a handful of spectators. After Sabalenka sealed the victory, the two friends were not allowed to embrace. They tapped the other’s racquet and Sabalenka blew a kiss. They laughed.

Continue reading...

They have a middle-class reputation, but one outdoor school near Nottingham is reconnecting disadvantaged 10-year-olds with nature and a sense of freedom

When Kate Milman was 21, she paused her English degree at the University of East Anglia to join protests against the Newbury bypass. It was 1996, and the road was being carved out through idyllic wooded countryside in Berkshire. She took up residence in a treehouse, in the path of the bulldozers, and lived there for months. It was a revelation. She lived intimately with the catkins, the calling birds, the slow-slow-fast change in the seasons. Despite being in a precarious position as a protester, she felt completely safe and her brain was calmed.

“You know when you go camping and go back to your house, and everything feels wrong? The lighting is harsh and everything seems complicated indoors. It just got under my skin, this feeling – that [living in the woods] is like being at home.”

Continue reading...

The story of global conflict is all the more powerful when it isn’t seen in black and white. Artist Marina Amaral explains her latest work

On a stretcher lies a patient; his ashen face protrudes from under a green blanket, eyes closed. Two uniformed women carry the stretcher, wearing face masks. It looks as if it’s a lovely day: the sun is shining, the shadows dark, the sky blue. But this is not a happy picture. Is the casualty even alive, or has he already been taken by the killer virus that has wrapped itself around our planet like a python, squeezing the life from it?

The photograph was taken at an ambulance station in Washington DC. Within the past couple of months? It could have been, if it weren’t for the uniforms (I don’t think today’s nurses wear lace-up leather boots) and the stretcher. In fact, it was taken more than a century ago, in 1918, during the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed so many millions. The photographer is unknown, forgotten. But the black and white picture was recently “colourised” by Marina Amaral.

Continue reading...

When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman

• Interview: ‘Our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate’

For centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures. That cynical image of humanity has been proclaimed in films and novels, history books and scientific research. But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind. This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don’t even know about each other.

When I started writing a book about this more hopeful view, I knew there was one story I would have to address. It takes place on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. A plane has just gone down. The only survivors are some British schoolboys, who can’t believe their good fortune. Nothing but beach, shells and water for miles. And better yet: no grownups.

Continue reading...

Teenager remains in hospital as two men are arrested after collision on Streatham High Road

A 16-year-old cyclist is in a life-threatening condition after being hit by two cars in south London.

The boy was critically injured in the collision in Streatham High Road shortly before 11.20pm on Friday.

Continue reading...

Decca Classics’ youngest-ever signing, Christian Li, has been hailed a ‘superstar’ who is already up there with the greats

The classical music world is no stranger to young talent. The 19th century virtuoso Niccolò Paganini started playing aged seven, while Yehudi Menuhin caused a sensation with his performance, at the same age, of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.

Now, however, there’s a new kid on the block, whose backers say transforms from “normal child” to “absolute superstar” the moment the lights dim. Christian Li, a 12-year-old schoolboy violinist from Melbourne, recently became the youngest-ever artist signed by the Decca Classics record label. He will release a new recording later this month, a contemporary adaptation of a traditional Chinese folk tune.

Continue reading...

The pandemic is giving us a lesson in life, hope and death. It’s one we should never forget

Back in the days when we all still hurried oblivious through crowded city streets, the names chalked on the pavement must have been easily missed. But now a long-running campaign by rebel botanists across Europe to highlight overlooked nature in the city, scribbling names and plant details alongside a pretty weed growing through a wall or a tree spreading overhead, has unexpectedly found its niche.

Going for a walk is the only real freedom many have had for weeks, and with no particular place to go but out, there is finally time to notice nature creeping through the cracks: the birdsong no longer drowned out by traffic; the daffodils in front gardens giving way to frothy peonies; a fat supermoon hanging heavy on the night horizon.

Continue reading...

• GoFundMe page for Navajo and Hopi aid lists many Irish names
• Choctaw Nation sent donation in 1847 for potato famine victims

The list of recent donors reads like an Irish phone book. Aisling Ní Chuimín, Shane Ó Leary, Sean Gibbons, Kevin Boyle, Kevin Keane, Clare Quinn, Eamonn McDonald, on and on down a GoFundMe page that by Friday had raised $3.15m of a $5m goal.

The individual amounts are not remarkable – $10, $20, $30, some exceeding $100 – but the story behind the donations stretches back two centuries and encompasses a singular act of generosity that forged a bond between Native Americans and Ireland, a bond now renewed in the coronavirus era.

Continue reading...

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported in each of England’s local authorities

• Coronavirus - live news updates
• Find all our coronavirus coverage here
• How to protect yourself from infection

Please note: these are government figures on numbers of confirmed cases – some people who report symptoms are not being tested, and are not included in these counts.

Continue reading...

When @DacotaLameHumor shared this cute video with the caption "My cat just locked up my dog lmfaooo", people on Twitter saw it as one more proof of cats' superiority over dogs. 

28-years-old model, Emily Ratajkowski, and her husband are the loving owners of Colombo, the cutest good boy.   

They have all spent their quarantine days with their close friends, Josh Ostrovsky, founder of the Fat Jewish meme account, his wife, Caitlin King, and their dog, Happy.

On Saturday, Emily decided to hosts a special wedding ceremony for Colombo and happy - 'quarantined together so why not marry our children".  
Ratajkowski shared plenty of behind-the-scenes footage on Instagram from the ceremony, including individual images of Colombo and Happy posing while wearing dog cones as the "the groom" and "the bride", respectively.

Congrats, Colombo and Happy! 

Our pets are our children, and they deserve to be spoiled as such.

That's why we had to share with you these tiny crochet cat couches created by the crafty people on the subreddit r/crochet.

Sure, you could go and just buy a cat bed without exerting much effort, but they're not as fun or cute as this too cute to handle cat couch.

So, if you're looking for a new crochet project to tackle, this has got to be it! 

The couches are shaped with thick foam and polyester filling to really give it that comfy sofa look.

There are a few craft stores online who are offering the crochet patterns if you like. 

Meet the handsome cat, William, who is meeting (for the very first time) his baby kitten named Artist.

Artist is 2 months ago, obviously adorable and very playful.

Here is how we are imagining the conversation between these two beauties went:

Kitten: "I'm looking for my dad."

Dad: "I'm looking for my son."

Kitten: "Well I hope you find your Son."

Dad: "And I hope you find your father." Walks away

Koyasu plays Silver Fox executor Boris

Ikegami also serializes mini-series spinoff of BEGIN manga

DLC character debuts for game on May 13

Story of minor noble's talentless son with access to secret training dungeon

Episode 4 was previously delayed to May 8

Stars Akari Kitō, Miku Itō perform opening theme song

Saito Production, Big Comic staff prioritize manga staff's safety

3rd season of shorts promoting city in Chiba prefecture airs on July 6

12-episode series previously set to premiere this fall