Conservative leader’s ‘It’s a Britannia Shield’ announcement proves no one does farcical improv better than her

Just another day in Crapland. It’s amazing what you can get used to. You can’t say the Tories haven’t put a lot of thought into their party conference. It takes some programming skill to make every day even more dismal than the last. You come expecting very little and get even less.

Schopenhauer would be in dreamland. The very act of being has never felt so inconsequential. But yet there’s something very comforting about this. You leave the Birmingham theme park attraction feeling better about yourself than when you arrived. Who knew abject failure could be quite so much fun? You find yourself congratulating some members on being able to dress themselves. A curious hybrid of an endangered species and care in the community?

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basics they scrimp on? The Queer Eye legend talks handmade gifts, secondhand shopping and bag obsessions with the Filter

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Jonathan Van Ness rose to fame as the beauty and hair care expert on the multi-award-winning show Queer Eye. Their eight-year tenure as one of the “Fab Five” presenters ended when the show’s final season aired in January 2026. A hairstylist by trade, they have their own cruelty-free, vegan haircare brand, JVN Hair.

Beyond TV and beauty work, Van Ness has continued a career as a comedian, writer and podcast presenter. They have written five books, including the New York Times bestselling memoir Over the Top and their latest young adult novel, which they wrote alongside Julie Murphy, Let Them Stare. Van Ness continues to be an advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, working on campaigns with The Trevor Project and Planned Parenthood.

The term Afrobeats is applied to all sorts of genres, flattening them into one. Artists, media and the music industry must do better at showing off the richness of African pop

In 2024, South African pop star Tyla won the best Afrobeats award at the MTV VMAs. Beaming in a yellow dress, she began her acceptance speech in a celebratory tone. “This is such a big moment for African music. The global impact of Water,” – her hit single – “proves that African music can be pop music.” But as the audience’s cheers swelled, she became more sombre, describing the moment as bittersweet. “There’s a tendency to group all African music as Afrobeats,” she continued. “Even though Afrobeats has opened so many doors for us, African music is so diverse. I come from South Africa, I represent amapiano”, referring to the country’s rolling, sensual dance subgenre. Her passionate entreaty notwithstanding, months later she’d reprise her win in the Afrobeats category of the American Music Awards.

Tyla is hardly the only African artist to rail against the Afrobeats tag. Tems has spurned the term, describing her music as a cocktail of “Afro, R&B, soul and alternative elements”. Likewise, Burna Boy prefers to call his music Afrofusion, a fitting characterisation of the smorgasbord of sounds that converge in his music. Wizkid, Ckay, King Promise and Davido have also chafed at the term Afrobeats, yet it persists and holds back African music.

Copyright law in the US only applies to human-made creations, but AI characters like Tung Tung Tung Sahur are challenging that

One of the most beloved characters in an absurdist genre of online video content has become the center of an international legal battle that could determine where human creativity ends and artificial intelligence begins.

Tung Tung Tung Sahur, also known as Triple T, was created in 2025 by an Indonesian teen who goes by the username Noxa, using OpenAI’s image-generation tool. Based on a kentongan – a type of drum used to wake south-east Asian Muslims for their pre-dawn meal during Ramadan – the character is an anthropomorphized version of the instrument with a broad smile and a vacant stare. He sits under the umbrella of “Italian brain rot” internet videos.

Tate Britain, London
The Young British Art of the 1990s was brash and macabre but also intelligent and emotional. This breathlessly superficial show reduces it to a stylish pose

Jake and Dinos Chapman were dismissed by some even in the 1990s as overgrown adolescents selling shock for its own sake, and yet it is their work that brings this dismally shallow show closest to a moment of depth. Their sculpture Great Deeds Against the Dead, based on a print of Napoleonic war atrocities by Goya, is a display of dismembered, bleeding nude corpses hung on a tree. It asks questions about war and art, the representation of pain, whether art can have a moral purpose. The best British art of the 1990s was like that, coming on as brash, vulgar, macabre, yet also unexpectedly intelligent and emotional. Unfortunately this show is neither.

You’d think Tate Britain would want to do justice to a decade in which these Millbank premises played a starring role, staging the Turner prize in the years when bisected cows, concrete houses and elephant dung got the nation arguing. At the start of the 1990s no one thought Britain was a leader in contemporary art. By the millennium, we were better known for new art than new novels.

From ‘the new Toni Kroos’ to the US’ next big hope, Cavan Sullivan, we select some of the most talented players born in 2009. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … back to 2014. Here’s our Premier League class of 2026

Students, staff and parents march in cities including Marseille and Lyon, while up to 40,000 expected in Paris

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Nearly 90,000 students, staff and parents have taken to the streets in cities across France as protesters blockaded hundreds of high schools in a nationwide day of action against long hours, missing teachers and crumbling classrooms.

The French interior ministry said 86,000 people took part in marches in cities including Marseille, Nantes ⁠and Lyon on Tuesday morning, with up to 40,000 more expected to join the largest demonstration, in Paris, later in the day.

Counter-terrorism policing says 22-year-old detained in London on suspicion of terrorism offences

A seventh man has been arrested in London on suspicion of terrorism offences related to the suspected RAF Fairford terrorism plot, police have said.

The 22-year-old British national was arrested in Westminster, central London, on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006, counter-terrorism policing said.

Sarah Pochin bought Anglesey property two days after writing to minister about impact of second home ownership on rural communities

A Reform UK MP bought an £800,000 second home on a picturesque Welsh island two days after raising concerns in parliament about the impact of second homes on rural communities.

Sarah Pochin completed the purchase of a Grade-II listed property on the southern coast of Anglesey (Ynys Môn).

Tory leader says proposed ‘Britannia Shield’ would not be comparable to Israeli missile defence system

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Kemi Badenoch has denied she compared a new air defence system proposed by the party to Israel’s Iron Dome, despite using the term in her press release and a newspaper article.

The Conservative leader said the party’s proposed “Britannia Shield” would not be comparable to the missile defence system in Israel, which is primarily designed to counter short-range attacks.