The News

 A recent story gleefully made its way through gossip columns this week. It started as a blind item in celeb gossip newsletter, Popbitch.

“The story goes that a recent houseguest of Gwynnie's catastrophically shat themselves in bed while staying there, then fled back to the city before they had to face the music”

The Gwynnie in question was Gwyneth Paltrow and, needless to say, the blind item did not remain blind. The man was outed. No, I am not linking to it. You can Google in case you were planning to invite him to stay in your guest bedroom this weekend.

But I feel like that man deserves some compassion. So if I could talk to him, here is what I’d say:

First, don’t be so hard on yourself! People have digestive problems all the time. Maybe you ate something bad. Or drank too much. Perhaps you tried one of Gwyneth’s delicious concoctions that you thought was a dessert but turned out to be a nourishing peptide serum. We’ve all been there! You panicked, and much like literally everything that was inside of your body at the time, you ran. Was that the ideal way to handle it? Of course not. But this is all very normal and no one will judge you for what is a natural reaction to an embarrassing situation.

Second, it’s time to get a full facial reconstruction, enter witness protection, and start a new life as a boiler repairman slash rodeo clown in Rapid City, South Dakota. Because I am so sorry but there is no coming back from this.

How do I say it nicely? You made the news in a week where one presidential candidate learned he was free to murder anyone he wants as long as he calls it “official business”, and the other one had a debate performance so haunted it could have ended with someone whispering “Joe Biden? Why that man died ten years ago this very night.”

Do you know how hard it is to capture the public’s attention on a week like that? And yet here you are.

By the way, you might notice that I am not using your name. We will also not run pictures of you that some other sites are running, because I do not want this life for you. I do not want to make things worse. I just want to tell you the truth: Rodeo clown. Rapid City, South Dakota. It’s your only option.

What’s that you say? You’ll miss your friends? Sorry, bud. At least some of your friends are out there telling this story to anyone who will listen. But fear not! You will make new friends with your fellow rodeo clowns! I know your previous pals were celebrities, but you haven’t lived until you’ve gone to a Rapid City Applebees, ordered a Prime Rib Dipper, and gossiped about whether any of the pig-wrestlers are juicing.

Besides, you have more in common than you think. These are people who have regularly been in pants-shitting situations and they know how to deal with them.

Rodeo Clown Daren Tuftin jumps over a Mexican fighting bull while fellow clowns Kelly La Coste, in barrell, and Ryan Byrn distract the animal during the 1995 Calgary Stampede in Calgary, Alberta.

Rodeo Clown Daren Tuftin jumps over a Mexican fighting bull while fellow clowns Kelly La Coste, in barrell, and Ryan Byrn distract the animal during the 1995 Calgary Stampede in Calgary, Alberta.

Reuters

But come on, won’t this go away soon? Won’t everyone forget about it as soon as the next celeb-adjacent scandal comes along? Great question.

No.

Unlike the feces that went at an unprecedented pace through your body, this shall not pass. Because the thing is, you have committed the worst possible kind of faux pas: a very funny one.

There is nothing funnier than pooping. And there is nowhere funnier to do it than in a bed owned by Gwyneth Paltrow, a woman who subsists entirely on arugula and the memory of a cake she once saw in a magazine. Gwyneth is a perfect pooper. She poops on a schedule and then it is immediately wrapped and donated to a museum for study.

Don’t worry, I think you’ll actually enjoy your new life. You’ll meet barrel racers and bull riders and people who tie up tiny cows and then immediately let them go. And here’s the best news. In this new life—when a 3,000 pound bucking bull comes running at you full-speed, looking to gore your most important parts? Well, I think you already know how you’ll react.

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 One of Hollywood's oldest companies, Paramount Global, has agreed to merge with independent film studio Skydance Media.

Under the deal, Paramount's non-executive chair Shari Redstone will sell her family's controlling stake in the company in a complex transaction that will result in a new firm worth around $28bn (£21.9bn).

It marks the end of an era for the Redstone family, whose late patriarch, Sumner Redstone, transformed a chain of drive-in cinemas into a vast media empire.

As well as Paramount, the group includes the television networks CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

"Our hope is that the Skydance transaction will enable Paramount’s continued success in this rapidly changing environment," Ms Redstone said in a statement.

According to the company its TV channels have a global reach of over 4.3 billion subscribers across more than 180 countries.

The merger would combine Paramount, home of classic films such as Chinatown and Breakfast at Tiffany's, with its financial partner on several recent big releases, including Top Gun: Maverick and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Under the agreement, Skydance will invest around $8bn in Paramount, including paying $2.4bn for National Amusements, which controls the group.

National Amusements owns just 10% of Paramount Group's shares but accounts for almost 80% of its voting rights.

Paramount said it expected to close the deal by the summer of next year.

Paramount Global traces its origins back more than a century to the founding of Paramount Pictures Corporation in 1914.

The studio has made many hit films, including the Godfather, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible series.

But the entertainment giant has struggled over the past decade. Paramount Global's shares have fallen by more than 75% in the last five years.

Skydance is owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, who founded US technology giant Oracle.

The announcement came after eight months of negotiations that saw Redstone holding talks with a number of potential partners including Sony and private equity firm Apollo.

In April, Paramount's chief executive Bob Bakish left the company after clashing with Ms Redstone over the planned Skydance deal.

The deal comes as the global entertainment industry is being transformed by the video-streaming revolution.

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 American player Emma Navarro upset No. 2 seed Coco Gauff at Wimbledon, the latest in a string of exits by top-seeded women at the tournament.

Navarro won 6-4, 6-3 Sunday, the fourth round of the tournament, making it her first time making it to the quarterfinals in one of the Grand Slam contests, which also include the U.S. Open, French Open and Australian Open.

Navarro is seeded 19th in the tournament.

“I don’t have a ton of words, but just really grateful to be out here on Centre Court, at a tournament with so much history and tradition that so many legends have played on before me,” she said post-match. “It’s a real honor.”

Navarro said she and Gauff were both trying to impair the other’s forehand stroke during the match.

“I love matches like that where it feels like it’s not just a hitting or striking competition,” she said. “There’s strategy involved and it feels like a chess match or something, so that was really enjoyable for me.”

Gauff has been knocked out of Wimbledon in the fourth round in each of her appearances, including in 2021 and 2019, at age 15.

Navarro also defeated Naomi Osaka in the second round and will play Italy’s Jasmine Paolini in the next round.

Gauff was the latest top-seeded woman to depart Wimbledon. Over the weekend, No. 1-seeded Iga Swiatek lost, while the reigning Wimbledon champion, Markéta Vondroušová, lost last week.

SOURCES 

 A Dutch sperm donor who fathered hundreds of children has described a new documentary about him as "misleading".

A Netflix docuseries, released on Wednesday, focuses on the women who have had children using the sperm of Jonathan Jacob Meijer.

One woman has said she felt "betrayed, sad and angry" after finding out how many other children Meijer had fathered.

But Meijer told the BBC the documentary is deceptive because it gives prominence to those who are unhappy rather than the many families he says are grateful to him.

Responding to the interview, its executive producer described the claim that the majority of families are happy as "completely untrue".

In the interview, Meijer also said he sees "absolutely nothing wrong" with fathering hundreds of children.

The 43-year-old declined to be interviewed for the Netflix documentary, but he spoke to BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on Wednesday.

"They deliberately called [the documentary] The Man With 1,000 Kids, when it should be 'the sperm donor who helped families conceive with 550 children'," he told the programme.

"So already from the start they are deliberately deceiving and misleading."

He continued: "I think Netflix did a great job at selecting five families [who are unhappy] out of the 225 families that I've helped, and they [the other families] will definitely tell you something else."

Netflix told Woman's Hour it would not comment on Meijer's interview, but Natalie Hill, the documentary's executive producer, did speak to the programme.

"I've spent the last four years speaking to families who have been impacted by Jonathan's lies. I've personally spoken to 45 or 50 families," she said.

"Fifty families made impact statements to the court about his lies, and pleaded with the judge that he stop. So this continued platform for Jonathan to talk about it being a handful of women is completely untrue."

Meijer has been a donor for 17 years. In many cases, he made donations privately, which meant dealing with the families directly rather than via a private clinic.

Some women who chose him as a donor say he did not make clear to them the extent of how many other children he had fathered.

"I'm conflicted because he told me back then that he was donating to five families," one mother, Natalie, told Woman's Hour.

"It turned out in 2021 I read an article in a newspaper that it was hundreds of families. That's why I'm conflicted and don't agree with his methods."

Some women he has donated to have described him as "a narcissist", while others have suggested he represents a public health risk.

Asked if he thought his estimate of 550 children was a lot, Meijer said: "It is for a normal man, but not for a sperm donor.

"For a sperm donor it's quite common. They go up into the hundreds of children. They [the clinics] will ship the donor semen to multiple countries."

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 Dental hygiene student Miki Sudo of Florida has won her 10th title at the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest.

Sudo consumed 51 hot dogs in 10 minutes on Thursday in New York City — and set a new world record for women.

The 38-year-old defending champion last year won after forcing down 39 1/2 hot dogs. She defeated 13 competitors from around the world, including 28-year-old rival Mayoi Ebihara of Japan. Ebihara came in second after eating 37 hot dogs in 10 minutes. She was also the runner-up in 2023.

With the event's biggest star —- Joey “Jaws” Chestnut — out of the contest this year, Sudo’s result set up a possible scenario in which the women’s champ out-eats the men’s winner. Geoffrey Esper, who came second last year, also has a personal best of 51, but only ate 49 last year.

Chestnut, who won 16 out of the previous 17 contests, isn't attending the competition over a sponsorship tiff. Instead, he'll compete against soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso later in the day. That leaves the traditional Brooklyn event wide open for a new winner in the men's division, with eaters from around the world competing on America's Independence Day to see how many hot dogs they can eat in 10 minutes.

Thousands of fans flock each year to the event held outside the original Nathan’s location in Brooklyn's Coney Island, a beachfront destination with amusement parks and a carnivalesque summer culture. ESPN is broadcasting the contest live. The men’s will begin at approximately 12:20 p.m.

Competitors are coming from over a dozen states and five continents, with prospects from Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic vying for the coveted title and $10,000 prize money.

There's going to be a new champion,” Australian James Webb, who holds a world record for eating 70 doughnuts in eight minutes, said at a preview event in New York on Wednesday.

Last year Chestnut, of Indiana, chewed his way to the title by downing 62 dogs and buns in 10 minutes. The record, which he set in 2021, is 76.

“I'm going to be pushing myself,” Sudo said Wednesday. Her rival Mayoi Ebihara, from Japan, said through a translator that she would eat until she passes out, with a goal of downing 50 hot dogs.

Chestnut was initially disinvited from the event over a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods, a company that specializes in plant-based meat substitutes.

Major League Eating, which organizes the Nathan’s Famous contest, has since said it walked back the ban, but Chestnut decided to spend the holiday with the troops anyway.

Chestnut said he wouldn’t return to the Coney Island contest without an apology.

The event at the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. ET, will use traditional franks, with Chestnut attempting to out-eat four soldiers in five minutes.

Even though he won't be eating their vegan products, Impossible Foods is promoting Chestnut's YouTube livestream of the exhibition by flying airplanes with banners over Los Angeles and Miami. The company will also donate to an organization supporting military families based on the number of hot dogs eaten at the event, a spokesperson said.

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 A British startup may have found the answer to one of the frustrations of driving an electric car — waiting around for the battery to charge.

Nybolt, based in Cambridge, has developed a new 35kWh lithium-ion battery that was charged from 10% to 80% in just over four and a half minutes in its first live demonstration last week.

That is much faster than the 20 minutes or so it currently takes some electric cars using a fast charger, such as a Tesla (TSLA) Supercharger. It is also much closer to the two minutes it takes to fill up the average gasoline-powered car.

“Our extensive research here in the UK and US has unlocked a novel battery technology that is ready and scalable right now,” Nyobolt’s co-founder and CEO, Sai Shivareddy, said in a statement Friday. “We are enabling the electrification of new products and services currently considered inviable or impossible.”

Nyobolt’s technology builds on a decade of research led by University of Cambridge battery scientist Clare Grey and Cambridge-educated Shivareddy, the company said. Key to its batteries’ ability to be charged super-fast without a big impact on their longevity is a design that means they generate less heat. It also makes them safer as overheating can cause a lithium-ion battery to catch fire and explode.

In addition, the materials used to make the batteries’ anodes allow for a faster transfer of electrons.

Nyobolt is currently in talks to sell its batteries to eight electric car manufacturers. At 35 kWh, the battery is much smaller than the 85 kWh in a more typical American electric vehicle (EV). Yet the technology may be used in larger battery packs in the future.

Comparatively long charging times are a major drawback of EVs currently on the market. They slow down road trips and they’re an inconvenience for owners who can’t charge their cars at home.

Nyobolt’s innovation, tested in the firm’s sports car prototype, is particularly encouraging for commercial EV fleets and drivers relying on electric cars in their jobs, according to Paul Marchment, consultant at Arval, a vehicle leasing specialist owned by BNP Paribas.

The units used to charge the Nyobolt battery are few and far between in the UK, so in order for this to really make an impact, there needs to be an increase in the provision of ultra-rapid chargers,” he said.

Shivareddy told CNN that the number of fast chargers was rising both in the US and the European Union, and that he expects to “pretty much have them everywhere” by the end of the decade.

In North America, three out of four fast chargers are Tesla’s Superchargers, and virtually every big automaker in the US has committed to making EVs compatible with Tesla’s charging technology, known as the North American Charging Standard. Nyobolt’s battery is compatible with a Supercharger, the startup told CNN.

“We would love to work with Tesla and other leading (manufacturers) to bring our vision to life — with the aim of making recharging times the same as refueling times,” Shivareddy said. “This would require industry to collaborate for the rollout of a large number of such high-power chargers, along with the grid/off-grid power supply.”

Not ready for prime time just yet

Independent testing of Nyobolt’s batteries by what it called a leading global manufacturer found that they can achieve over 4,000 fast-charge cycles, equivalent to 600,000 miles (965,600 kilometers), while retaining more than 80% of capacity, Nyobolt said in its Friday statement. “This is many multiples higher than the warranties of much larger EV batteries on the road today,” it noted.

William Kephart, an e-mobility specialist at consultancy P3 Group and a former engineer, said EV batteries of the kind Nyobolt has developed could “theoretically” be charged as fast as the firm is promising, but the challenge was manufacturing such batteries on an industrial scale.

A crucial chemical element in Nyobolt’s batteries is niobium but, as Kephart pointed out, last year only an estimated 83,000 tonnes (94,500 tons) was mined worldwide. Compare that with graphite, commonly used as anode material in lithium-ion batteries: an estimated 1.6 million tonnes (1.8 million tons) was produced in 2023.

In addition, there are currently “a lot of unknowns” with the niobium battery technology, he told CNN. “The industry will work it out… (but) it’s not seen by the industry as a scalable technology just yet,” he added.

Besides slow charging, obstacles to EV ownership in the US and Europe include so-called range anxiety — the concern that the car will not have enough battery charge to reach its destination, especially acute during long drives — and EVs’ higher average price compared with new conventional cars.

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 A severe thunderstorm can potentially bring down wires, transformers, and trees, cutting out power for residents, Con Edison warns. In this photo, a lightning bolt strikes down during a storm with the One World Trade Center tower, left, as a backdrop on July 23, 2014, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Julio 

A flash flood warning has been issues for Staten Island and other parts of New York City until 8 p.m., says Notify NYC: “Heavy rain of between 0.5 and 1 inch of rain have fallen. Additional 1 to 2 inches are expected and will cause flooding in the city, including on highways, streets, and underpasses as well as other poor drainage areas and low-lying spots.”

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Tonight, a severe thunderstorm can potentially bring down wires, transformers, and trees, cutting out power for residents, Con Edison warns.

In a written statement, Con Ed said that they are preparing crews “to respond to any outages that occur due to the severe rain and windstorms expected to hit New York City and Westchester County.”

The National Weather Service declared a severe thunderstorm warning and a flood advisory, projecting that Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens will be at the mercy of inch-sized hail and 60 mile-per-hour winds.

Anywhere from half an inch to an inch of rain will pour down onto New York City, spurring floods in places like “small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other poor drainage areas and low lying spots,” the advisory said.

Should areas lose power tonight, Con Ed will prioritize restoration based on importance. “Mass transit, hospitals, police and fire stations, and sewage and water-pumping stations,” come first. Then, employees will work on areas with widespread outages, before tending to tinier nucleuses without electricity.

AccuWeather’s website states that the thunderstorm will roll in during the evening hours, sparking “flash flooding and localized damaging wind gusts,” on top of hail and downpours.

This thunderstorm is the first one anticipated to hit Staten Island this week, but it won’t be the last.

The Fourth of July, with all of its bright, bursting fireworks, may be hampered by potential thunderstorms and humidity as temperatures reach a high of 86 degrees.

“I certainly wouldn’t be cancelling the outdoors plans yet, but [it’s] something to keep in mind,” Senior AccuWeather meteorologist Tom Kines told the Advance/SILive.com today, as the weather becomes a bit more “unsettled” later this week.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday will follow a similar pattern to the Fourth of July, with the humidity blanketing Staten Island and thunderstorms lurking in the skies above.

Con Ed’s statement advises residents to stay away from any downed wires or transformers, as they can still be live. If you should lose power, the statement additionally states that you shouldn’t “plug a generator into a wall unit, use it indoors, or set it up outdoors near open home windows or air-handling vents.”

To report an outage or a downed wire or transformer, Con Ed customers can opt into a text thread with Con Ed, or by calling Con Ed directly at 1-800-75-CONED (1-800-752-6633), the statement detailed.

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A car has ploughed into a crowd of people killing at least nine in the South Korean capital Seoul, police say.

The traffic accident took place at around 21:30 local time (13:30 BST), they added.

As reported by Yonhap news agency, a man believed to be in his 60s drove the vehicle into pedestrians waiting at a traffic stop.

At least four more people have been taken to hospital.

Police say they are investigating the incident, but warn that casualty numbers might increase.

According to local media, the car was driving in the wrong direction and crashed into two other vehicles before it made contact with pedestrians.

Police said the accident took place at an intersection near Seoul city hall. The driver in question, who was arrested at the scene, reportedly told the police the car suddenly accelerated.

Six people died at the scene, while three others died later of their injuries.

Yonhap, South Korea's news agency, reports that the man arrested was 68 years old.

The speed limit in the country is 50 km/h (31 mph) on general urban roads, and 30 km/h in residential areas, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) into the country's road safety.

In 2022, pedestrians in South Korea accounted for 35% of all road deaths – a high share compared to other OECD countries, the agency reported.

But in the same report, the OECD highlighted that road fatalities in the country had declined in recent years.

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Wimbledon 2024 is underway in SW19 and audiences can enjoy comprehensive live match coverage of Wimbledon 2024 exclusively on BBC TV and BBC iPlayer and listen to the very latest from the pristine courts across BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and BBC Sounds.