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Kate Garraway shares update on husband's condition during coronavirus treatment: 'He's still with us'

TV host said she was grateful for NHS workers doing 'so much' to help husband Derek Draper




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Lennie James: 'The Tories have been dishonest about coronavirus – it's a dangerous game'

The creator and star of 'Save Me Too' talks to Ellie Harrison about government failings, growing up without his father, and why he's not ready to write about racism




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EastEnders star Adam Woodyatt reveals brutal response to people who bodyshame him in public

Actor shared two recent fan encounters that left him furious




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Jimmy Fallon's daughter gatecrashed her father's video interview with Jon Hamm

Mad Men actor played along as Winnie Fallon showed him her new colouring book




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The Apprentice's Lottie Lion apologises after impersonating fellow candidate in 'racist' Instagram video

Lion says she meant it as 'light entertainment for fans during these difficult times'




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VE Day: A Nation at Peace review – coronavirus lends a grim relevance to this sobering documentary

What was probably intended as a relaxing Sunday-night nostalgia-fest has become something else entirely during lockdown




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The Last Dance: Obama on-screen description updated after it was dubbed 'disrespectful'

Former US president described as merely 'Former Chicago Resident' in previous episodes of series




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The Last Dance: Kobe Bryant makes posthumous appearance in new episode

NBA star filmed scenes weeks before his tragic death in January




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Last Dance viewers left 'emotional' as Kobe Bryant raves about 'big brother' Michael Jordan

Archive footage shows Jordan tell Bryant 'I'll see you down the road' after first match together




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Homeland: Who the makers originally wanted to play Carrie and Brody (and why they rejected Damian Lewis several times)

Show's creators were told 'he will never play this role – please do not bring him up ever again'




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American Horror Story star Leslie Jordan claims Lady Gaga 'rode him and howled at the moon' before filming

Actor alleged singer wanted to 'sexualise' him ahead of their scene




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Star Wars actor Anthony Daniels 'fell deeply, deeply asleep' watching Rise of Skywalker for the first time

Daniels played the uptight robot C-3PO in all nine core Star Wars films




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Isolation Stories review, episode one: Sheridan Smith shines in first TV drama made under lockdown

The actors were directed over Zoom for the ambitious four-part ITV series – and judging by the inaugural episode, the results are laudable




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The Mandalorian: Spy Kids filmmaker Robert Rodriguez confirmed as season 2 director

Announcement followed a day of newly revealed Star Wars projects




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Craig Revel Horwood says Strictly Come Dancing could film without live audience under lockdown

The show is due to return in September




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Coronavirus: Game of Thrones actor becomes Asda delivery driver during pandemic

Michael Condron played Bowen Marsh in the fantasy epic




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Strictly Come Dancing: Brendan Cole says show is 'hideous' when dancers and celebrity partners don't get on

Judge Craig Revel Horwood recently said 2020 series could go ahead without studio audience




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Mick Jagger performs mundane tasks in spoof quarantine PSA on Jimmy Fallon's show

Rolling Stone can herd sheep, chop vegetables, and perform a few repairs




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Sopranos creator David Chase writes coronavirus-themed scene in which Tony is alive

Character's fate was famously left ambiguous at the end of the seminal gangster drama




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Lenny Henry's daughter posed as comedian and sent 'manipulative' false messages in attempt to win back boyfriend

Billie Henry was given a five-year restraining order




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Joe Gilgun: 'Stealing all day is hard graft'

The star of 'This Is England' talks to Annie Lord about the misrepresentation of working-class people on TV, the return of his show 'Brassic', and his struggles with medication for a bipolar disorder




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SNL at Home: Saturday Night Live announces season finale with third remote episode

Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks have contributed to the programme remotely




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Pete Davidson fan delivered drugs to comedian's mother's house during lockdown

Davidson is currently quarantining in his mother's basement




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David Attenborough: 15 of the naturalist's best quotes

In celebration of his 94th birthday




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Have I Got News For You: David Tennant jokes that Eamonn Holmes lives in a 'tin foil bungalow'

Holmes came under fire for giving validity to a conspiracy theory linking 5G to coronavirus




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The Eddy review: Damien Chazelle's jazz drama sounds wonderful but the plot feels like an afterthought

Director's new series stars Andre Holland as a once-famous American jazz pianist who has been unable to play since his son died




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Dave Greenfield: putting beauty at the rotten heart of the Stranglers

The keyboardist, who has died aged 71 of coronavirus, upended the rules of punk with organ arpeggios and a moustache – and pointed the way to post-punk

Music writer Pete Paphides’ recent memoir, Broken Greek, contains a vivid description of its seven-year-old author encountering the Stranglers for the first time, during a 1977 Top of the Pops appearance. “They landed in the living room while I was totally unsupervised,” he writes, “and scared the shit [out] of me. By now I would have seen images of punk rockers … but they looked like circus entertainers compared to [the Stranglers]. They looked too old to be punk. They looked like the sort of people you pass in the street and your mother puts her arm round you, stares at the pavement and doubles her walking speed … The point at which it all got too much was when the camera cut to Dave Greenfield – who has died from Covid-19 aged 71 – jabbing his keyboard while looking straight ahead with what seemed, beyond doubt, to be the eyes of a murderer, an effect somehow compounded by the army-surplus boiler suit he had decided to wear. Just like that, my list of phobias had got a little longer: worms, biting into mushrooms, insects, the fibreglass King Kong which stood next to a ring road in Birmingham city centre and, now, Dave Greenfield from the Stranglers.”

It’s funny writing, but it’s also very incisive about the Stranglers: in real life Greenfield was, by all accounts, the band’s most approachable and charming member, but otherwise Paphides has it spot-on. The Stranglers complained relentlessly about not being accepted by the punk cognoscenti, but what did they expect? They didn’t look like punks, particularly Greenfield, who defiantly sported that least punk of facial accoutrements, a moustache. They were old, at least by the standards of the day, old enough to have the kind of musical pasts it was wise to keep your mouth shut about in the scorched-earth environment created by the Sex Pistols: Hugh Cornwell had played bass in a band with Richard Thompson, later of Fairport Convention; Greenfield had been in a prog rock band called Rusty Butler.

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Ghostpoet: I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep review – dark but defiant

(Pias)
Since his last outing, the south London musician and producer has eased up and moved to Margate. Yet this atmospheric return still carries the weight of the world

Ghostpoet – the brooding alias of south London-born Obaro Ejimiwe – is roughly a decade old this year. This dour bard has long been an artist ahead of his time. A track such as Cash and Carry Me Home, one of the highlights of his eclectic, jazz-inflected debut album – 2011’s Peanut Butter Blue and Melancholy Jam – defied genre as it mourned the self-inflicted pain of one drink too many. It now locates Ghostpoet as roughly adjacent to the south London jazz renaissance of the past few years – a multi-hyphenate scene in which most things go. Were it to be released today, its languorous, self-aware aperçus would find an even more receptive audience.

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Drake: Dark Lane Demo Tapes review – rap’s whingeing king hits a dead end

OVO
There are flashes of skill and rawness in this odds-and-ends mixtape but it feels like a clumsy lunge at commercial success

In a world where the boundary between mixtapes and albums is becoming ever more blurred, the title of Drake’s latest album highlights its interstitial nature. That said, it’s still slightly misleading. There are tracks here that sound like demos – the mopey James Blake-isms of Chicago Freestyle are audibly unpolished – but for the most part, it ’s a way of collecting up leftovers and leaks, spare tracks he apparently has lying around the studio.

Those inclined to view Drake’s career with a cool eye might be surprised he has any spare tracks lying around the studio, given the state of his last album. Listening to Scorpion, 25 songs long, required a certain degree of mental stamina: you needed to steel yourself against the panicky sensation that you might die of old age before it ended. But it wasn’t the sheer quantity that was the problem so much as the quality of what was there. Scorpion had its moments but was so hopelessly uneven that it was easy to buy into the theory that its length was not due to its author’s teeming multiplicity of fantastic ideas, but an attempt to game the streaming services: more songs means more streams, more streams means a higher chart placing.

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538: Daily presidential tracking polls...


538: Daily presidential tracking polls...


(Third column, 20th story, link)






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UPDATE: Arkansas venue plans concert despite state's virus limits...


UPDATE: Arkansas venue plans concert despite state's virus limits...


(Third column, 9th story, link)





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San Fran DA Wants Convicted Murderer Released -- His Dad...


San Fran DA Wants Convicted Murderer Released -- His Dad...


(Second column, 20th story, link)





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By making Florida his official residence, Trump may also have made legal mess...


By making Florida his official residence, Trump may also have made legal mess...


(Second column, 18th story, link)






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STUDY: US death toll halved had it acted 4 days sooner...







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Michael Jordan insists 'Republicans buy sneakers too' quote was a joke

  • Comment has followed superstar throughout his life
  • Jordan addresses issue during ESPN’s The Last Dance

Michael Jordan has discussed the quote that has come to define what many see as his willingness to put profit over principles.

During a 1990 Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, Jordan refused to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt, an African American who was running against the incumbent Republican Jesse Helms, a notorious racist. Jordan, who at the time had already won the first of his five NBA MVP awards, explained away his refusal to take a stance by saying “Republicans buy sneakers, too”.

Related: Michael Jordan's furious desire to conquer all still burns decades later

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Heavily restricted NBA practices expected to resume on Friday

NBA teams are expected to get the go-ahead to reopen practice facilities for limited use as early as Friday, less than two months after the coronavirus outbreak forced the suspension of the season.

With head and assistant coaches barred and scrimmages forbidden, the workouts are unlikely to resemble business as usual for the NBA but would nonetheless be a step towards normalcy for a league whose season was upended in dramatic fashion in March.

Related: My favourite game: Iverson stuns Kobe's Lakers in the 2001 NBA finals | Bryan Armen Graham

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UFC 249: Ferguson faces Gaethje as Dana White touts only game in town

  • Ferguson meets Gaethje for UFC’s interim lightweight title
  • UFC head Dana White eager to reach sports-starved audience

The main event of Saturday’s UFC 249 card in Florida is billed as being for the interim lightweight title but Tony Ferguson says he should be considered the real champion if he beats opponent Justin Gaethje.

Former collegiate wrestler Ferguson, coming into the bout on a 12-fight win streak, was supposed to fight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in Brooklyn on 18 April but that was postponed due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Related: UFC announces three events to be held without fans at Jacksonville arena

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What if the Hoover Dam Broke?

The Hoover Dam holds back 10 trillion gallons of water. That's enough to cover the state of Connecticut 10 feet deep. How much damage would be done if the dam broke?




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How the Environment Has Changed Since the First Earth Day 50 Years Ago

It's been 50 years since the first Earth Day, and while progress has been made in some areas, humanity still has had a major impact on the planet.




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My streaming gem: why you should watch The Most Dangerous Game

The latest in our series of writers recommending hidden films available to stream is a invite to travel back to 1932 for a brutal thriller

Some film tropes get wheeled out so often they create their own furrow. Perhaps that’s why the timeworn premise of “man hunting man” has evolved into its own disreputable but seemingly indestructible mini-genre. This year has already seen the deferred release of scattershot satire The Hunt, a button-pushing thriller from the Blumhouse production line in which snooty US liberals kidnap and stalk blue-collar “deplorables” in a customised paddock sited far from flyover country.

Related: 'My favourite forgotten film' – you recommend your best streaming gems

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The two Angus Taylor scandals that won't go away

In the past year Australia’s energy minister has been swept up in two scandals. The past week has brought developments in both. Anne Davies explains what questions he has yet to answer

You can read Lisa Cox’s and Anne Davies’ latest updates on the Jamland grass poisoning here and more on the doctored document saga here.

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Dancing in the streets: VE Day celebrations in 1945 - in pictures

A selection of archive photographs to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day

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David Sedaris: 'Alan Bennett's Talking Heads is pretty much the best thing ever'

The comic essayist on crying over Olive Kitteridge, his love for Richard Yates and the books that make him laugh

The book I am currently reading
Hidden Valley Road. It’s a nonfiction book about a family with 12 children, half of whom turn out to be schizophrenic. In the opening pages the mother sews a live bird’s eyes shut. And she’s one of the few who isn’t mentally ill!

The book that changed my life
Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. A friend read it out aloud to me when we were hitchhiking across America in 1976, and it made me think:That’s right – books! After high school I had forgotten about them. As soon as I got a stable address, I secured a library card, and started making up for lost time.

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Friday the 13th at 40: the maligned slasher that's haunted pop culture

The morality brigade loathed the hit teen horror on release but hockey mask-wearing villain Jason Voorhees has been with us ever since

Before production on the teen slasher A Long Night at Camp Blood had even started, before a final draft of the screenplay had even been submitted, thirtysomething writer-producer-director Sean S Cunningham decided to make an audacious statement. Not only would he use an advert in the industry paper Variety to confirm an inarguably ingenious title change but he would also use it to declare that his next film would be the most terrifying ever made, after a decade that saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left (which he also produced), The Exorcist and Halloween.

Related: Final Destination at 20: the bleakest teen horror film ever made?

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Lard-di-dah: how to render animal fats

It’s certainly a sometimes food – but if you already cook with animal fat, you’ll save money and prevent waste by rendering it yourself

Let’s talk about the four letter f-word: fats. Over the past 60 odd years they’ve been drenched in confusing controversy – to eat or not to eat, what kind should we eat, and according to who?

Animal fats have the worst reputation of all. I’m not here to argue the health facts – but please take the time to look at the research regarding what we replaced many old fashioned animal fats with, namely hydrogenated vegetable oils. Nutritionists suggest neither should play a major role in your diet – but many people who happily reach for margarine still flinch at lard.

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