Zoe Saldana’s box office record (and 15 other Oscar facts)
Getty Images Tom Cruise, pictured at the Academy Awards luncheon, starred in the best picture-nominated Top Gun: Maverick Hollywood has had an eventful 12 months – while Tom Cruise’s accountants probably enjoyed the best year of their lives, there was less good news for Batgirl and Chris Rock’s lower jaw. A killer robot called M3GAN, […]
Devizes pupil wins national coding competition with racing game
Family handout Wilf pictured with his winning game behind him A Wiltshire school pupil says he is “proud” to have won a national coding competition. Wilf, 10, from Wansdyke Primary School in Devizes, took joint first prize in Discovery Education 2024 Summer Coder Challenge. He designed a racing game using block coding to earn top […]
This ‘drawn-out’ and ‘self-important’ film proves the musical didn’t need to be split into two parts
Universal Pictures There are decent performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande – but this flat opening instalment of The Wizard of Oz prequel may not convert those who aren’t already super-fans. One of the key things to know about Wicked, the big-screen adaptation of the smash-hit Broadway musical, is that it’s not actually a […]
Amazon defeated Rekognition revolt by a large margin
Amazon A proposal to ban government use of the Rekognition system failed to attract mass support at Amazon’s annual general meeting An attempted shareholder revolt over Amazon’s sale of facial recognition technology to the police mustered less than 3% of votes cast at the firm’s annual general meeting. Even so, the system is set for […]
Chelsea named Women’s Super League champions, Liverpool relegated
Tom Garry, BBC Sport Of all the leagues required by Uefa to decide on a fair way to put forward teams for European competitions by “sporting merit”, the WSL was arguably in the most difficult position of all, following a thrilling, three-way title race, and many will find it strange for the ‘champions’ to have […]
Trowbridge man jailed for shining laser at police helicopter
The pilot – who was looking for a missing person – had to stop as a result of the laser beam A man has been jailed after shining a laser beam at a police helicopter, forcing it to abandon a search for a high-risk missing person. Nicholas Mutter, 41, of Swift Drive, Trowbridge, carried out […]
Are rural women smashing the glass ceiling of agriculture?
BEHROUZ MEHRI / AFP “We have a lot of yams, we just need buyers,” says Rosalina Ballesteros. In Montes de Maria, the hilly region on the northern coast of Colombia where she lives and works, they had a particularly good harvest this year – but demand is low and yams are rotting. So the community […]
Obama interview with BBC Persian TV
And so, the July, 2011, date is a date in which having ramped up our armed presence in Afghanistan in order to provide space and time for the Afghan security forces to develop and strengthen, and to blunt the momentum of the Taliban, we will then start gradually reducing the number of US troops and […]
PM promises ‘radical’ shake-up of adult education
PM: Covid has “massively accelerated changes that were already happening”. Boris Johnson has vowed “radical” changes to the adult education system in England to help boost the post-Covid economy. The prime minister said the pandemic had “massively accelerated” changes to the world of work, and made training gaps “painfully apparent”. He said funding changes could […]
‘I lost my best friend in a police shooting’
BBC Greg Crockett After a police officer shot and killed Greg Crockett’s best friend, he left Minnesota for good. Then in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, he decided he couldn’t stay away. How everything and nothing changed after the death of Philando Castile. Greg Crockett was sitting in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s […]