After 20 years in the British Army, I asked the @PoppyLegion for some assistance.
Last year they made £56.6 million from the poppy appeal and the best they could do was to reply with 'Ask Citizens Advice'
And to think I've helped raise money for this lot!!!
@UponTyneNews
In the IT (1990), Pennywise scared the kids for real. The child actors reportedly avoided Tim Curry on set. He stayed in character between takes, chain-smoking and flashing that grin, so the fear on camera wouldn’t be acting.
🚨 Luis Enrique wowed on how Manchester United broke Arsenal's low block:
🗣️ Henry:
“You kept pressing and pressing. Did it ever feel like Arsenal weren't going to concede?”
🗣️ Luis Enrique:
“We know Arsenal are one of the most organized teams in Europe. When they decide to defend deep, it becomes very difficult to create chances. Before this match, we studied Manchester United's 3-2 win against Arsenal because we wanted to understand what problems they created.
What we saw was a team brave enough to attack the spaces available and players with the quality to punish mistakes. The goals from Dorgu and Cunha showed that one moment of quality can completely change a game. So when Arsenal scored first against us, we remained calm because we had already seen an example of a team recovering from that situation.
That is why I think Manchester United will be very dangerous next season. If you can find solutions against a team as organized as Arsenal, you can compete against anybody.”
Voltaire passed away today in 1778.
There are two quotes of his I always come back to:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
and
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
"Los soldados israelíes me abofetearon, me patearon, me rompieron el coxis, me agredieron sexualmente... arrancaron mis pantalones y mi ropa interior, me insertaran una mano... a otras personas les insertaron armas dentro."
Juliet Lamont, una cineasta de documentales australiana y activista de la flotilla humanitaria de Gaza, denunció ser víctima de una violación por parte de los soldados terroristas de "Israel".
No verás esto en TV ni en la prensa occidental, "Israel" violó a mujeres que llevaban medicinas y alimentos a niños en Gaza... y a sus gobiernos occidentales ni siquiera les importa.
🚨🎙️ Patrice Evra on Barcelona reportedly trying to buy Marcus Rashford for £13 million instead of the agreed £26 million:
🗣️ “If Barcelona don’t want to buy Rashford, they should come out and say it instead of acting like they’re doing Manchester United a favour.
They’ve just signed a player who isn’t better than him for €80 million, even though Rashford has already proved his quality and shown that he can still perform at the highest level.
But I don’t completely blame Barcelona.
They have already seen that Marcus’ options are limited and that he is desperate to join them. That’s why they are treating both him and Manchester United the way they want.
When a club knows your relationship with your former team has broken down and that you are desperate to join them, they will always try to gain the upper hand in negotiations.
People will treat you the way you allow them to treat you.
Scientists pulled one kind of bacteria out of a jar of kimchi, fed it to mice, and those mice pooped out twice as much plastic as the mice that didn't get it. That single experiment is behind every "eat kimchi to flush plastic from your body" headline going around this week.
The bacteria, a strain called CBA3656, sticks to nanoplastics. Those are plastic flecks so small they slip straight through your gut wall and end up lodged in your kidneys and brain. In a clean lab dish, the bacteria grabbed 87% of the plastic around it. Then the team ran it through conditions that copy a working human gut, the acid and the constant squeezing, and the grip dropped to 57%. A second kimchi strain they tried fell apart in the same test and held onto just 3%.
So the grabbing part holds up, and in those mice it did push more plastic out the other end. But two details keep this far from dinner advice. The mice were germ-free, raised with no gut bacteria of their own, nothing like the crowded gut you actually have. And the bacteria was purified and fed on its own, in amounts you'd never get from a few bites of cabbage. The team also tested just one type of plastic, the kind in foam cups and takeout boxes, so nobody knows yet whether it grabs the dozens of others you swallow every day.
The irony is almost funny. Kimchi is traditionally salted with sea salt, and sea salt is one of the most common ways plastic sneaks into food in the first place. When scientists checked salt brands from six continents, they found up to 1,674 plastic specks in a single kilogram, with the worst counts in Asian sea salts. Korean food researchers have even started swapping in pink salt to make kimchi, just to cut the plastic. So the same jar can be dropping plastic in while its bacteria carry a bit out.
Salt is also why "just eat more kimchi" falls apart. One cup of cabbage kimchi carries around 750 milligrams of sodium, more than a third of all the salt you're meant to get in a whole day. Korea eats more kimchi than anywhere on earth, and it also has one of the highest stomach cancer rates in the world, something researchers link partly to that heavy salt habit. Eating bowls of it to chase a result from sterile mice would buy you a guaranteed sodium problem for a plastic payoff no one has shown works in people.
Right now there is no proven way to pull microplastics back out of a living human body. This study is a promising first step toward one, built on bacteria people have safely eaten for centuries. But calling it a plastic detox skips every step between a purified strain in a sterile mouse and a tub of kimchi in your fridge.
The 1p loophole that wrecks Reeves’ ISA reforms. The Telegraph says the new rules only penalise you if 100% of your ISA is “cash‑like”. So hold £19,999.99 in money‑market‑style assets and 1p in equities and you’re exempt from the 22% charge. A flagship reform undone by a penny
Erin Brockovich has launched a website and has begun tracking all data centers in America and logging resident complaints
In just 1 week it’s already logged 1,690 resident complaints
For this who don’t remember
Erin Brockovich was the paralegal responsible for winning out a case against PG&E, Hinckley in California, because their wastewater runoff was seeping into rural areas and creating a lot of health issues for, for the surrounding neighborhoods
That case brought in a $333 million settlement that went to the families affected by the situation because a lot of them either had staggering medical bills due to their tap water was no longer safe
So why is this important, well residents all over America are reporting their tap water and river water is being heavily polluted by data centers
Her map of data centers is new, she just launched it
The website features an interactive US map showing operational, under-construction, and proposed AI data centers, overlaid with community-reported complaints
Residents can submit reports with details, photos, and locations. Within days of launch, it received a surge of submissions over 1,600 in the first week, and reports of 1,800+ from 47 states shortly after
Common Resident Complaints Being Logged
- Water usage
- Raising utility bills for residents
- Noise pollution: Constant 24/7 humming from fans, generators, and cooling systems disrupting sleep, daily life, and wildlife.
- E-waste from frequent hardware upgrades, pollution including PFAS concerns
Elon Musk: "Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he frequented Jeffrey Epstein? I wouldn't want that guy to babysit my kid."
Today’s headlines show energy bills could increase by more than £200 a year to almost £1,900 with OFGEM’s new price cap 📈
But while families struggle with bills, our research shows energy giants announced record profits making a total £30billion in 2024 and pay billions to shareholders.
It’s clear who the privatised system is really working for, and it's not us.