News (old posts, page 900)

Jimmy Swaggart, US televangelist brought down by scandal, dies aged 90

Swaggart, who amassed huge following and millions of dollars, gave tearful apology after sex worker revelations

Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by revelations of paying sex workers, has died. He was 90.

Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late-night television. His death was announced on Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause was not immediately given, although he had been in poor health.

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Italy limits outdoor work as heatwave breaks records across Europe

Portugal and Spain suffer historic temperature highs for June, as French schools close because of heat

Outdoor working has been banned during the hottest parts of the day in more than half of Italy’s regions as an extreme heatwave that has smashed June temperature records in Spain and Portugal continues to grip large swathes of Europe.

The savage temperatures are believed to have claimed at least three lives, including that of a small boy who is thought to have died from heatstroke while in a car in Catalonia’s Tarragona province on Tuesday afternoon.

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‘Completely radical’: how Ms magazine changed the game for women

In a revealing HBO documentary, the women involved with the groundbreaking feminist publication describe the rocky road to progress

The first of July marks the anniversary of Ms magazine’s official inaugural issue, which hit newsstands in 1972 and featured Wonder Woman on its cover, towering high above a city. Truthfully, Ms debuted months earlier, on 20 December 1971, as a 40-page insert in New York magazine, where founding editor Gloria Steinem was a staff writer. Suspecting this might be their only shot, its founders packed the issue with stories like The Black Family and Feminism, De-Sexing the English Language, and We Have Had Abortions, a list of 53 well-known American women’s signatures, including Anaïs Nin, Susan Sontag and Steinem herself. The 300,000 available copies sold out in eight days. The first US magazine founded and operated entirely by women was, naysayers be damned, a success.

The groundbreaking magazine’s history, and its impact on the discourse around second-wave feminism and women’s liberation, is detailed in the HBO documentary Dear Ms: A Revolution in Print, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca film festival. Packed with archival footage and interviews with original staff, contributors and other cultural icons, Dear Ms unfolds across three episodes, each directed by a different film-maker. Salima Koroma, Alice Gu and Cecilia Aldarondo deftly approach key topics explored by the magazine – domestic violence, workplace harassment, race, sexuality – with care, highlighting the challenges and criticisms that made Ms a polarizing but galvanizing voice of the women’s movement.

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California overhauls landmark environmental protection rules

Governor Gavin Newsom says bureaucratic roadblocks have made it difficult to build housing in the most populous state

California is overhauling its landmark environmental protection rules, a change state leaders say is essential to address the state’s housing shortage and homelessness crisis.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, had threatened to reject the state budget passed last Friday unless lawmakers overhauled the California Environmental Quality Act, or Ceqa, a 1970s law that requires strict examination of any new development for its impact on the environment.

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New Trump portrait hangs in Colorado capitol months after president’s outburst

New White House-approved painting was donated after Trump described the original as ‘purposefully distorted’

Months after Donald Trump expressed strong negative opinions about a presidential portrait of him in the Colorado state capitol that he described as “purposefully distorted”, a White House-approved replacement now hangs in its place.

The new portrait, which Trump reportedly demanded be printed with a golden border so it would catch the light and “glimmer”, bears a close resemblance to Trump’s official second-term photograph, which hangs in more than 1,600 federal buildings across the US and thousands more on a voluntary basis.

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K-pop supergroup BTS announces comeback for spring 2026

South Korea’s most lucrative musical act has been on break since members undertook national service

The K-pop supergroup BTS have announced their comeback in the spring of 2026 with an album and world tour.

South Korea’s most lucrative musical act has been on a break since 2022 as its members undertook the mandatory service required of all South Korean men under 30 due to tensions with the nuclear-armed North.

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‘I have a lot of sympathy for Elon Musk’: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on his tech bros AI satire Mountainhead

He is the master of ripped-from-the-headlines drama, a writer who skewers the billionaire class. As Mountainhead takes him into new territory, he talks about his nuanced view of the world’s richest man – and why a bonnet drama may be next

When he gets to his London office on the morning this piece is published, Jesse Armstrong will read it in print, or not at all. Though the building has wifi, he doesn’t use it. “If you’re a procrastinator, which most writers are, it’s just a killer.” Online rabbit holes swallow whole days. “In the end, it’s better to be left with the inadequacies of your thoughts.” He gives himself a mock pep talk. “‘It’s just you and me now, brain.’”

Today, the showrunner of Succession and co-creator of Peep Show is back at home, in walking distance of his workspace. He could be any London dad: 54, salt-and-pepper beard, summer striped T-shirt. But staying offline could feel like a statement too, given Armstrong is also the writer-director of Mountainhead, a film about tech bros. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Open AI’s Sam Altman, guru financiers Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen: all these and more are mixed up in the movie’s characters, sharing a comic hang in a ski mansion. Outside, an AI launched by one of the group has sparked global chaos. Inside, there is snippy friction about the intra-billionaire pecking order.

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