TEXTILES: brace yourselves. We have a new hate crime on our books.

WEEK five, or is it six, if anyone's still counting, and yet another fiercely competitive trend in social isolating has emerged.

The Virtual Grand National takes place today - but what TV channel is the race on?

The Virtual Grand National takes place today and Express Sport is on hand with the full list of runners and riders.

The Virtual Grand National takes place today and Express Sport is on hand with all the live stream information, including how to watch the race for free.

The Virtual Grand National takes place this weekend instead of the actual race - but who is favourite to win?

The Virtual Grand National replaces the real-life National this afternoon with ITV providing life coverage of a lifelike simulation to substitute for the cancelled regular race. Express Sport brings you live updates with an animated Tiger Roll the favourite for victory.

The Virtual Grand National takes placed this evening in the absence of the real race at Aintree.

Potters Corner triumphed at the Virtual Grand National with an explosive finish in a boost to the NHS.

Profits of £2.6million have been donated to NHS Charities Together after Saturday's Virtual Grand National.

Horse racing in Britain is currently suspended amid the coronavirus pandemic - but when will racing resume?

Champion jockey Frankie, 49, looks back at his favourite festival on the horse-racing calendar, Royal Ascot

KATE MIDDLETON, 38, wowed fans by appearing in a video with a new mother and midwives. The Duchess of Cambridge did so ahead of UK's Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week.

KATE MIDDLETON wore a yellow dress with a tree-inspired pattern on This Morning today. The 38-year-old mum of three spoke about her new project.

THE QUEEN addressed the nation as part of VE Day celebrations today, and Her Majesty wore her Aquamarine Clip Brooches, making a sweet nod to her father, who gave her the jewellery.

Storm Ciara is threatening to cause chaos with this week's sporting events including Premier League football, Six Nations rugby and eight horse racing meets.

Hull City host Leeds United in the Championship today and Express Sport is on hand with all the live stream and TV information.

Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa has admitted that he faces a selection headache for the Whites' Championship game against Huddersfield on Saturday, and he could drop striker Patrick Bamford in favour of youngster Tyler Roberts, with the 21-year-old scoring twice against Hull last weekend.

When talking about the impacts of climate change, we mostly hear about changes to land and the planet’s surface or atmosphere. However, most of the warming is going into the oceans where a lot of ecosystem changes are also occurring.

This update includes a couple of info graphics and charts as well as a video from an ocean and climate scientist that explains this further.

Read full article: Climate Change Affects Biodiversity

The global financial crisis has spawned a global protest movement campaigning against things like inequality, corporate greed, lack of jobs, etc. Although these protests have occurred for decades, they have typically been in the developing countries, or about the situation in developing countries. As such, many Western nations, who have strongly influenced the conditions in developing countries, have typically not paid much attention to such protests, no matter how large. However, this time, the global financial crisis has hit the ordinary citizens of Western nations quite hard, and inspired by the Arab Spring and protests in Spain, a global movement seems to have sprung up.

The global protests page had not been updated since the end of 2003, but has not included a brief overview of more recent protests such as the so-called Occupy Movement. The older content remains because it is interesting to note some of the parallels too, and it is perhaps important to note that these protests are unfortunately not new. Whether this time it can make a difference is too early to tell but a lot of people in wealthy countries this time are also participating.

Read full article: Public Protests Around the World

A recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program was portrayed by most Western mainstream media and politicians as new proof Iran is close to building nuclear weapons. The US Senate passed sanctions on Iran targeting its central bank in response.

However, the report does not say what the mainstream media and politicians claim. It has been much more guarded and much of it is about the state of Iran’s program up to 2003. After that period, the report is much more uncertain. Furthermore, many experts contend that the speculations (not definitive proof) that are in the report are misguided, too, leaning on unreliable sources, for example.

This update to the page on Iran has more information about this. Although the page is long, look for the new section about half way down under the heading of Regurgitating old stories as new information to justify sanctions?

Read full article: Iran

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 17), held in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.

Predictably and sadly, the same issues have resurfaced: lack of media coverage, West stalling on doing anything trying to blame India and China instead, lack of funding, disagreement on how to address it, etc.

Geopolitical threats (real and imaginary) quickly focus a lot of political will and money is easily found to mobilize military forces when needed.

The economy also takes center stage as the current pressing issue, while climate change is easily deferred, in the hopes that the West can let China and India pick up the burden of addressing emissions even though they have not contributed to the historical build up of emissions that have started the recent changes in the climate.

This page is an overview of the Durban conference.

Read full article: COP17 - Durban Climate Conference

China, India and other emerging economies are often the focus points for climate change negotiations. Many rich nation politicians and their media often point to their rising emissions as proof that they urgently need to be bound to emission reduction targets in the same way rich nations are.

But what is often easily forgotten or omitted is that greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for a very long time. In other words, historic emissions matter.

Historical data show that the majority of greenhouse emissions have been by rich nations, known as "Annex I" countries in climate negotiation speak:

Apart from China and India, the remainder of the top 10 historical greenhouse gas emitters have been from Annex I countries.

This is why 2 decades ago the climate negotiations started by understanding there were "common but differentiated principles" and why "Annex I" countries were initially given target emissions while the rest were to be given space to grow given the urgent need for poverty alleviation and development.

Furthermore, climate negotiations frameworks have always said developing nations need to avoid a polluting path to industrialization, so they can’t just use historic emissions injustice as an excuse not to do anything. At the same time, the dirty path to development was also the cheap and easy path which developing countries need to avoid, so it was also agreed that the Annex I countries should help developing countries in various ways. Needless to say much of this has not really happened.

These and additional charts have been added based on updated data up to 2008 on historical carbon emissions plus estimated emissions for 2009 and 2010.

Read full article: Climate Justice and Equity

It has long been known that advertisers will “photoshop” (slang for editing photos to touch up or airbrush out imperfections) photos to make the subject more attractive. But many have pointed out that this subtle manipulation often goes too far. Young people, girls in particular, are bombarded with images of how they are supposed to look, contributing to many social and health problems as a result.

The American National Advertising Division (the US advertising industry’s self-regulating watchdog) for example, recently moved to ban the misleading use of photoshopping and enhanced post-production in cosmetics adverts as it could be too misleading. In the UK some adverts have been banned because the effects of airbrushing has resulted in very misleading cosmetic adverts. France has even considered legislation to explicitly identify retouched images.

Some will claim it is up to parents to teach their children how to recognize these things, but parents cannot often win against an army of professional psychologists, marketers and others all focused on pushing their own images onto children, when studies also say that children are not old enough tell the difference between commercial and other content.

This page has been updated to add a section about this issue with further links, videos and examples.

Read full article: Media and Advertising

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis. Their analysis shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago.

Global temperatures have warmed significantly since 1880, the beginning of what scientists call the “modern record.” At this time, the coverage provided by weather stations allowed for essentially global temperature data. As greenhouse gas emissions from energy production, industry and vehicles have increased, temperatures have climbed, most notably since the late 1970s. In this animation of temperature data from 1880-2011, reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.

Click on the image to see the video:

Read full article: Global Temperature Anomaly, 1880 - 2011

Flexibility mechanisms were defined in the Kyoto Protocol as different ways to achieve emissions reduction as part of the effort to address climate change issues. These fall into the following categories: Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism.

However, these have been highly controversial as they were mainly included on strong US insistence and to keep the US in the treaty (even though the US eventually pulled out). Some of the mechanisms face criticism for not actually leading to a reduction in emissions, for example.

The updates to this article includes a couple of videos summarizing some concerns about cap and trade.

Image ©: Centre for Science and Environment

Read full article: Climate Change Flexibility Mechanisms

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 18), held in Doha, Qatar in December 2012.

Predictably and sadly, the same issues have resurfaced: lack of media coverage, West stalling on doing anything, lack of funding, disagreement on how to address it, etc.

This page is an overview of the Doha Climate conference. It also includes a feed of latest news stories from Inter Press Service’s coverage of the conference.

Read full article: COP18 - Doha Climate Conference

A recent study found that coral reefs will face severe challenges even if average global warming temperature rise is restricted to 2 degrees Celsius. This is a rise that most countries are struggling to negotiate and meet. But reefs are very sensitive to temperature changes, experts fear the window of opportunity to prevent massive reef loss is very small.

Read full article: Nature and Animal Conservation

19% of the world’s reptiles are estimated to be threatened with extinction according to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Zoological Society of London. Reptiles include snakes, lizards, crocodiles, turtles and tortoises. But some species are at more risk than others. For example, freshwater turtles alone are at a 50% risk of extinction. Reasons vary, but include the usual suspects such as climate change and loss of habitat.

A recent study also estimated that some 100 million sharks are being killed each year — an unsustainable rate, given how long some species take to mature and reproduce. Much of the demand is driven by Chinese rising affluence and demand for shark fin soup in the mistaken belief it has various health benefits.

This small update to the biodiversity loss page has further details.

Read full article: Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions

At the start of June 2013, a large number of documents detailing surveillance by intelligence agencies such as the US’s NSA and UK’s GCHQ started to be revealed, based on information supplied by NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden.

These leaks revealed a massive surveillance program that included interception of email and other Internet communications and phone call tapping. Some of it appears illegal, while other revelations show the US spying on friendly nations during various international summits.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of furor. While some countries are no doubt using this to win some diplomatic points, there has been an increase in tension with the US and other regions around the world.

Much of the US surveillance programs came from the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001. Concerns about a crackdown on civil rights in the wake of the so-called war on terror have been expressed for a long time, and these revelations seem to be confirming some of those fears.

Given the widespread collection of information, apparently from central servers of major Internet companies and from other core servers that form part of the Internet backbone, activities of millions (if not billions) of citizens have been caught up in a dragnet style surveillance problem called PRISM, even when the communication has nothing to do with terrorism.

What impacts would such secretive mass surveillance have on democracy?

Read full article: Surveillance State: NSA Spying and more

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 19), held in Warsaw, Poland in November 2013.

Predictably and sadly, the same issues have resurfaced: West stalling on doing anything, lack of funding, disagreement on priorities, etc.

This page is an overview of the Warsaw Climate conference and also includes a feed of latest news stories from Inter Press Service’s coverage of the conference.

Read full article: COP19 - Warsaw Climate Conference

Over 40 years ago, rich country governments agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official aid to poor countries for development assistance.

The average aid delivered each year has actually been between 0.2 to 0.4%. The shortfall has therefore accumulated to almost $5 trillion dollars at 2012 prices, while total aid delivered in that same time frame has reached $3.6 trillion.

This update includes updated charts and graphs that look into this further.

Read full article: Official global foreign aid shortfall: $4 trillion

An overview of the Climate Change Conference (also known as COP 20), held in Lima, Peru in December 2014.

While it seemed like it was a successful meeting, because developing nations were committed to drawing up their own plans for emissions reductions for the first time, a number of important issues were left undecided such as how financing would work.

This page is an overview of the Lima Climate conference.

Read full article: COP20—Lima Climate Conference

Many are afraid that tackling climate change is going to be too costly. But increasingly, studies are showing action will not just be cheaper than inaction, but could actually result in economic, environmental and even health benefits, while improving sustainability.

This new page includes more information on the above issues.

Read full article: Action on climate change is cheaper than inaction

Rangers could be without Alfredo Morelos and Scott Arfield for their trip to play Hearts on Sunday.

Celtic legend Chris Sutton has bitten back Robbie Savage on Twitter, as the Hoops finished the week top of the Scottish Premiership table, after Rangers’ 1-1 draw against Hearts.

Steven Gerrard is very frustrated with Rangers’ poor performance against Hearts.

Celtic host Hearts in the Scottish Premiership today and Express Sport is on hand with all the live stream and TV information.

The FA Cup quarter-final draw takes place this evening but what ball number is your team? Express Sport has all the details.

Manchester City fans are fuming with manager Pep Guardiola over his team selection for the FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday, as both Phil Foden and Eric Garcia are left out of his starting line up for the clash at Hillsborough.

Manchester City beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 in the FA Cup clash at Hillsborough, as Pep Guardiola's side progress to the quarter-finals, just in time for the FA Cup draw. Express Sport is on hand to bring you all of the Citizens' player ratings after a tough evening against the Championship club.

In these unprecedented times, we have published the following open letter thanking those working in the meat industry in Wales for their co-operation.

TENCENT has confirmed that issues with the latest PUBG Mobile update process are being looked into this weekend, ahead of the Season 13 Royale Pass release.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY 2, a possible Freddie Mercury sequel, has had an update from Brian May.

ELVIS PRESLEY's Sunday Meatloaf can be made at home and now Graceland chef's has shown fans how from the mansion's kitchen in a new video.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 6 may go ahead without Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow and fans are having none of it.

JOHN LENNON revealed his least favourite Beatles song was one he "knocked off" from Elvis Presley.

The British Open has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Masters is all about the roars that sweep around Augusta National on the back nine on a Sunday but sometimes it is a different noise that carries through golf's most evocative landscape. The collective gasps of thousands of patrons; the soundtrack to calamity.

The Ryder Cup remains scheduled to take place in September despite other major golf tournaments being postponed.