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Cannes film festival Taylor-Joy makes a fantastic action heroine, facing down a hilariously evil Chris Hemsworth in signature high-speed fights ‘My childhood! My mother! I want them back!” With this howl of anguish, young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, sets the tone of vengeful rage that runs through George Miller’s immersive, spectacular prequel to his Mad Max reboot from 2015 . Once again, there are the crazily colossal and weird convoy-action sequences which fuse the notion of “chase” and “violent combat” into a series of delirious high-velocity contests between motorbikes, 18-wheelers and armed parascenders all attacking and shooting at each other while fanatically zooming in the same direction. The vehicles themselves are what makes the Mad Max movies so very strange. Many films are called “surreal”, but these strange, ritualistic gladiator-vehicle displays in the reddish-brown emptiness really do look like something by Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst . Furiosa is the ori

Researchers also find lack of fresh fruit and vegetables in schools and say portion sizes sometimes not enough Free school meal allowances are not enough for students from lower-income backgrounds to buy healthy school lunches, research suggests. The study, presented at the European Congress of Obesity (ECO), involved 42 pupils aged between 11 and 15 at seven schools across the UK. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/xBKLlG6

The prime minister as a stork: would you trust him with your infant? Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/gA8k0pD

Writer known as ‘Canadian Chekhov’ captured the desire and darkness of ordinary life in rural Canada, particularly for women Alice Munro, Nobel winner and titan of the short story, dies aged 92 Alice Munro, the 2013 Nobel laureate considered one of the greatest short story writers in the English language, has died at the age of 92 at her care home in Ontario, after suffering dementia for more than a decade. Born and raised in south-western Ontario, the “Canadian Chekhov” captured the desire and darkness of ordinary life in rural Canada, particularly for women – subjects long out of focus for the mainstream, finally achieving recognition later in life. A housewife and mother of four children, one of whom died in infancy, Munro would sneak in writing around naps and housework, publishing her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, in 1968, at age 37. Lives of Girls and Women, her only novel – really a collection of interlinked stories, as she called it – follo

Significant advances by Vladimir Putin’s forces in the Kharkiv region must concentrate minds in the west at a critical moment Antony Blinken’s unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday was a welcome and timely show of support. It was the US secretary of state’s first trip to Ukraine since America belatedly signed off on a $61bn aid package last month, allowing a desperately needed supply of new arms to finally flow to troops in the east. As Mr Blinken met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the capital, events continued to underline how urgently such assistance – and much more of the same – is required. The ultimate scope of Russia’s significant offensive in the Kharkiv region is yet to become clear. In part it may be intended to create a buffer zone, protecting Russian territory close to the north-east border. But as thousands of residents are once more displaced, and the prospect looms of a huge artillery assault on the city of Kharkiv, the incursions are also diverting threadbare Ukrai

The most harrowing experiences of women in labour come under eight common themes in the MPs’ report Women suffering ‘harrowing’ births as hospitals hide failures, says MPs’ report A parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma in the UK received more than 1,300 written submissions. The stories shared were harrowing. In many cases, the trauma experienced by women was caused by blunders before, during and after labour. Failures were often covered up by hospitals seeking to frustrate efforts by families to find answers, according to a review of the evidence by the Guardian. There were also many stories about a lack of compassion. Women were often ignored when they felt something was wrong, and were mocked, shouted at or denied basic needs such as pain relief. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/wepMOGg

With many NHS maternity services struggling and a shortage of midwives, MPs’ plan for overhaul is ambitious That the findings of the UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma are far from surprising does not diminish the fact that they are shocking, devastating and difficult – indeed distressing – to read. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for birth trauma’s 80-page report should give ministers, NHS bosses and the midwives and obstetricians who deliver care serious pause for thought. It highlights how “mistakes and failures” by maternity staff lead to stillbirths, premature births, babies being born with cerebral palsy because they were starved of oxygen at birth, and also “life-changing injuries to women as the result of severe tearing”. How some mothers were mocked, shouted at, denied pain relief, not told what was going on during their labour, left alone in blood-stained sheets, with desperate bell calls for help going unanswered – all examples of “care that lacked compassion”.