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The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Digested week: Wimbledon joy and the canny PR of the Dalai Lama
As someone who enjoys the women's tennis at Wimbledon, so to speak, the tournament's opening days are an annual joy and this week has been electric. Emma Raducanu leads the rise in British women powering up the world rankings, which makes the era of women's tennis I grew up in – I have a lot of time for Jo Durie, but those were hard years – seem like the 19th century. Today, after two stunning opening-round matches, Raducanu will meet Aryna Sabalenka, the mighty Belarusian world number one, which means tomorrow I will be on court one (in the park) knocking imaginary clay dust from my shoes and pretending to be in the final. If the tennis is sublime, the crowd so far has been slightly under par – although it's early days. Last year, the title of Wimbledon best dressed went for my money to Greta Gerwig, in a tan suit the provenance of which I still can't track down, as well as Zendaya in Ralph Lauren and Julia Roberts in Gucci. This week in the royal box and around the grounds we've had Cate Blanchett, who is welcome in any setting, Olivia Rodrigo and Russell Crowe, who combed his hair and dug out a tie for Centre Court. (Esquire ran a story about the £65,000 Rolex he was wearing, which if it was intended to set us against him, won't work – I won't hear a word against Rusty.) There were also, as usual, a high turn out of what my teenage tennis partner and I used to refer to nastily as Midweek Ladies, a crowd who, off-court, wear floral, ankle length dresses in pale shades and on court, are always one double fault away from losing their nerve and reverting to an underhand serve. Everyone should watch My Mom Jayne, the documentary about Jayne Mansfield made by her daughter Mariska Hargitay, released this week on HBO Max and a jaw-dropper of revelations and sadness. You may know Hargitay from her role as Detective Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU – I didn't even know she was Mansfield's daughter – and she was three years old in 1967 when her 34-year-old mother was killed in a car crash outside New Orleans. The film is heartbreaking, not least because Hargitay, who has no memories of her mother, was in the car with her siblings when it crashed. All three children survived and were raised by their father, but as Hargitay reports, she grew up feeling vaguely ashamed of her mother, a Hollywood sex bomb who spoke in a breathy voice that a generation later fell out of usage. As Hargitary digs into the history of the mother she never knew, she discovers Mansfield was an accomplished pianist and violinist, a brilliant, ambitious woman trapped by the only persona Hollywood allowed her – until now. Finally, someone has greeted the release of a new Brad Pitt movie not with praise-be gratitude for America's ageing sweetheart, but by looking at Pitt's success in shrugging off an allegation of domestic abuse. While in most of the entertainment press, Pitt's new film is treated to the customary chuckling puff piece, New York magazine runs the headline Brad Pitt is Fooling You and proceeds to get into it: the actor's image preservation, the crisis management PR he retains (former client: Johnny Depp) and the details of Angelina Jolie's allegation that he assaulted her and one of their children on a private plane. As the piece concludes, nobody cares. There's been a vibe shift since #MeToo, which let's not forget, Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, aligned itself with by co-producing the movie adaptation of She Said, about the exposing of Harvey Weinstein – a sterling piece of allyship from America's most sensitive male feminist, or something else entirely. Either way, nothing sticks. In the last five years, the worst coverage Pitt has had is for Bullet Train. There was a story in the Sun mid-week about Pitt's ex, Jennifer Anniston, or rather, about a 43-year-old man from Southampton who believed himself to be in a Facebook relationship with the Hollywood star, who had reached out to him asking for a loan. That might have been your first clue, Paul, that something about this – hard to put your finger on what exactly – didn't smell right. It wasn't the first time the unfortunate victim had been targeted over social media by scam accounts claiming to be Hollywood stars. But when 'Jennifer Anniston' sent him a copy of her driving license, along with the message 'I love you', it was enough to clinch things and convince the hapless Facebook user he was at the start of a beautiful relationship. As requested, he sent the former Friends star the £200 of Apple gift cards she was asking for and never heard from her again. Oh, to have the confidence of the Dalai Lama that we'll all get a second go-around at this. Ahead of his 90th birthday this weekend, the Tibetan spiritual leader discussed arrangements for his successor, by which, per Buddhist beliefs, he means the body into which he will be reincarnated. This is as much a political as a spiritual consideration and in his address, the Dalai Lama pushed back against the Chinese government's insistence on preapproving the reincarnation, remaining firm that when the time comes, he'll be reincarnated in line with Tibetan tradition and with no interference from Beijing. He has also dangled some spoilers, suggesting, tantalisingly, that the new Dalai Lama may not be a baby, as he was, and – in what would represent a reboot more shocking than the new Dr Who and Ghostbusters combined – may not even be male. Which goes to show that even spiritual leaders these days have a canny knack for PR.
BBC News
16 minutes ago
- BBC News
Russo the goat predicts England to lose first Women's Euros match
Russo has a bit of a reputation for predicting results - but her latest will win her no fans, having indicated defending champions England will lose their first game of the UEFA Euros 2025. The eight-year-old African pygmy goat, from All Things Wild in Worcestershire, was presented with two feeding stations - one adorned with an England flag, the other, which she ate from, bearing France's colours. "Russo really is 'the GOAT' when it comes to making decisions... so it would not surprise me in the slightest if her predictions turned out to be correct," said Matt Parker, manager of the Honeybourne zoo."[But] we're all rooting for the Lionesses to retain their European title – even if Russo isn't convinced about the opening game." "We're looking forward to what other predictions [Russo] has up her sleeve as the tournament progresses," added Mr Parker. Russo had a different verdict on Wales, with the prediction they will come out on top in their first game against the Netherlands."She seems to be a big fan of the Welsh team," Mr Parker added. Time will tell as to whether Russo has got it and Wales were both drawn in Group D of the tournament, with both playing on kick off against the Netherlands at 17:00 BST, with England going head-to-head with France at 20:00. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Times
20 minutes ago
- Times
Formula 1 has pole position in UK's £16bn motorsport industry
With his neon yellow baseball cap turned backwards on his head and sporting a wristful of beaded bracelets, Lando Norris casually signed autographs for a crowd of fans as he arrived at Silverstone on Thursday. The McLaren driver, 25, is expecting strong support at the Formula 1 British Grand Prix this weekend, especially from those in the 'Landostand', the grandstand newly named after him. He may have looked relaxed but the pressure is on. Wearing the brand's papaya and black colours, the young Briton will be hoping to compound his success at last week's Austrian Grand Prix, against his team mate Oscar Piastri. More than 480,000 people are expected to attend the sold-out event, 160,000 of them on Sunday for the main race. Hype around racing is even more frenzied than usual, driven by Brad Pitt's new film, F1, co-produced by Lewis Hamilton, in which he plays Sonny Hayes, Formula 1's most promising driver in the 1990s until an accident nearly ended his career before he stages a comeback. Although the excitement surrounding the F1 racing event is the most obvious aspect of its impact on the economy around Silverstone, its influence extends well beyond the weekend crowds and into the broader British tech ecosystem. Sport has long been a driver of technological innovation as teams strive to get an edge over one another, and nowhere is this more so than in motor racing. Over its 75-year history the premier motorsport series has brought some extraordinary inventions, including developing a breathing device in only four weeks during Covid, applying pitstop techniques within Great Ormond Street Hospital to cut errors after surgery on infants and introducing regenerative braking on London buses to cut emissions. The financial impact is huge. UK motorsport and engineering services turned over £16 billion in 2023 and employed 50,000 people, according to a report by the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA) and Grant Thornton. From next year, ten of the eleven Formula One teams will have either headquarters or a base in the UK: Cadillac F1 and Audi F1 will both be joining the grid next year and opening facilities in Britain. More than 50,000 people are employed by the 4,500 companies that make up F1's supply chain. Off the track, the popularity of ESports, virtual or 'sim' racing, is gaining ground and proving another lucrative source of income. To capture some of this energy, a group called the Silverstone Technology Cluster was started in 2017 by Pim van Baarsen to foster engineering, software and electronics businesses located by the track, which is nestled almost exactly between Oxford and Cambridge, an area dubbed UK Motorsport Valley. More than half its businesses are in motorsport and automotive but others are harnessing the innovations born out of motorsport to push the boundaries in fields such as aerospace, energy and healthcare. One example, based in the business park around the track, is Dumarey Flybrid, set up in 2007, which developed a small flywheel system for building sites. Its product stores kinetic energy and works alongside a traditional generator to power tower cranes. It started because Formula 1 implemented an 'engine freeze', a rule that stopped further pushes to improve engines and instead challenged racing teams to develop hybrid power systems, and it was the first business to use kinetic energy in motor car racing. Another is Wirth Research, which specialised in computational fluid dynamics, computer simulation used to study flows around objects, in F1 car design. The idea is to help engineers to understand how air moves over a car or how water flows through pipes so they can design things more efficiently and solve problems before building them. Wirth has used this expertise to branch out into products used by supermarkets to improve the efficiency of their chillers and cut energy consumption. British car racing champions play a central role in this halo effect of tech, especially one of the world's most successful: McLaren. Once dubbed the Manchester United of the sport, it was founded in 1963 by Bruce McLaren, a New Zealand-born racing driver who was killed at Goodwood aged 30. Ever since, it has become a global powerhouse in motorsport, winning numerous championships in the 1980s and 2000s with drivers including Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton. It is recognised for its cutting-edge technology, engineering expertise and contributions to the broader automotive and tech industries. The brand is also a magnet for others who want the cachet of its association, and its partners include Dropbox and Lego. Dan Keyworth, director of business technology at McLaren Racing, said the emphasis on tech was only increasing: 'I think it's seen as one of the major battlegrounds across the teams … a lot of the teams will be continuing to focus on the technology race off track: who can bring the best tools, systems, software to the game. 'We have a great phrase here — for every pound we spend on the car, we spend a pound on tools, methods and technology — because there has to be an equitable investment in what we do,' he told the TechRadar website. Racing is not an easy world to be in. McLaren has been under financial strain over the past few years and underwent a substantial restructuring in 2020, cutting more than a thousand jobs, compounded by Covid as supply chains were upended. Then there were problems with its new Artura hybrid sportscar. The latest accounts for Maclaren Racing, filed in September, revealed that it made £431 million in revenue and a profit of £30.4 million for the year ending December 2023. In March last year the Bahrain sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat bought the McLaren Group, which includes McLaren Automotive, which hand-builds lightweight supercars, and a majority stake in McLaren Racing. Airports such as Heathrow use technology developed by McLaren to receive real-time data on departures and arrivals, allowing them to predict delays and manage congestion. High-performance luxury UK car companies such as Aston Martin, McLaren and Morgan account for a mere 4 per cent of UK car production but are responsible for 12 per cent of its value and employed 15,000 people, according to a recent study by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Norris is the most likely British driver to win the Grand Prix but another Brit, George Russell, could also have a chance of victory, with the cooler conditions in England lending themselves to his Mercedes, which struggles in the heat. Hamilton, the nine-time winner, is aiming forten; he is yet to stand on the podium for his new team, Ferrari. Spectators' eyes will be on the hotly contested 2025 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, but there is a far more complex engine under the bonnet, which continues beyond the wave of the chequered flag.
