On Banksy’s Instagram post, one commentator wrote: “I love that he appears when enough time has passed to forget, and arrives with full force unnoticed” while another wrote: “As a long-time Banksy collector, this one really hits. Big monument energy, but the idea is brutally simple: a suited figure blinded by its own flag. Classic Banksy. Quiet at first, then impossible to unsee”.

For some players, moving to LIV made perfect sense. Veteran Englishman Richard Bland cashed in on the romance of his one DP World Tour victory, the 2021 British Masters, which effectively earned him an invitation to play LIV tournaments.

He did not receive a signing-on fee, but in 55 tournaments has netted nearly $20m (£14.8m).

In all, 105 players have so far competed on the LIV circuit. The lowest earners have been Englishman Oliver Fisher and Thailand’s Ratchanon Chantananuwat, who each picked up $136,000 (£100,000) from their lone appearances.

When LIV began in 2022, it attracted some of golf’s biggest names with huge signing-on fees. Phil Mickelson did not dispute reports that he was given $200m (£147m) to defect from the PGA Tour.

Smith, Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed (now back on the DP World Tour) and the then European Ryder Cup captain Henrik Stenson were other expensive recruits.

“If LIV takes five players a year for five years, they can gut us,” PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne told a senate committee in July 2023. The American circuit was rattled.

Initially, they struck a “framework agreement” with the Saudi PIF to try to heal the divide. That halted expensive and potentially, for both sides, revelatory legal proceedings.

But the faltering agreement foundered when the PGA Tour valued LIV at just $500m as Donald Trump tried to broker a peace deal in the White House at the start of his second term as US president in early 2025.

The Saudis felt the valuation was derisory and walked out of the talks. By then, the PGA Tour was much more bullish.

It was turning itself into a for-profit company with its players qualifying for potentially lucrative equity. The tour also won backing from the powerful Strategic Sports Group, which ploughed in an initial $1.5bn investment.

But with profit now the primary motive and a need to hammer down costs, the move has not been without pain. The PGA Tour is cutting 4% of its workforce with 56 job losses.

Prize money has gone through the roof, though. The Cadillac Championship, starting on Thursday, is one of several $20m Signature Events,, external with $3.6m going to the winner.

Those are LIV numbers. Such has been the inflationary effect of what seemed a bottomless pit of money coming into professional golf.

More than 1,000 homes in Plymouth have been evacuated after an unexploded Second World War bomb was discovered at a building site.

Officials have confirmed the device, identified as a 250kg German SC250, will be detonated in situ.

The discovery in Flamborough Road, Southway, led to a 400-metre cordon, with military experts concluding the device cannot be safely moved.

“Royal Navy and Army unexploded ordnance specialists have now completed a rigorous and detailed assessment of the device,” a council spokesman said.

“They have advised that it is not possible to safely remove it.

“The only safe option is to make the device safe in situ, which will involve a controlled detonation.

“This is planned to take place on Friday, once all safety measures are fully in place.”

The council said specialists were building a “sand mitigation structure” to reduce the impact of the blast.

“You will not be able to see the detonation and people are asked to stay well away from the area,” the spokesman said.

“A no-fly zone is also in place – drones are not permitted.”

The 400-metre cordon remains in place and residents will not be able to return home until the device has been made safe.

Southway Youth and Community Centre has been opened for use by evacuated residents.

Since it opened more than 50 residents have been helped and 25 households placed in temporary accommodation.

Oakwood Primary School, Little Acorns Pre-School and Beechwood Primary School will remain closed on Friday.

Colonel Nick Handy, from 8 Engineer Brigade, said the condition of the fuses in the bomb made it impossible to move it safely.

“Unfortunately we cannot get a definitive X-ray of the second fuse and therefore it is not safe to move that item,” Col Handy said.

“We are going to blow it in situ.

“When I say blow it in situ, we are going to try our hardest to deflagrate that item and burn it inside of a structure which will limit the damage to the local surroundings.

“I am pretty confident that the mitigation that we put up will limit most of the damage, but we will look to do that at some point on Friday.”

Col Handy said the device contained 130kg of explosives “that is 80 years old and it’s dangerous”.

“When that thing goes bang for want of a better expression, there will be damage,” he said.

“We will limit that as much as possible to ensure that nobody suffers.

“The mitigation that we put in place should affect only small amounts of damage on the outer extremities of the area.”

There were more than 50 Luftwaffe air raids on Plymouth between 1941 and 1944, killing 1,174 civilians in the city.

The first bombs fell on the city on July 6 1940, with the heaviest period of bombing occurring in March and April 1941.

Two years ago a 500kg German Second World War bomb was found in a garden in the Keyham area of Plymouth.

It forced the evacuation of thousands of people and was detonated at se

The Trump administration has called on TV network ABC to “take a stand” after a joke from its late night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel offended the US president and first lady.

Two days before the White House Correpondents’ dinner on April 25, Kimmel broadcast what he said was a “roast” of the Trump administration. Roasts are typically quite savage comedic attacks which have become a traditional part of the dinner.

Trump, who was famously the target of jokes from former president, Barack Obama, at a dinner in 2011, had never attended the dinner while in office. This year he opted to attend, but the comedian’s spot was taken by what was described as a “mentalist”.

So Kimmel said he decided to supply the roast on his show as an “all-American” version of the Correspondents’ Dinner. In what he said was a joke about the 24-year age difference between the couple, he described Melania Trump as “having a glow like an expectant widow”. But after a would-be assassin tried to launch a murderous attack two days later at the dinner, the Trumps have demanded his sacking.

“Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community,” Melania Trump wrote in a post on X.

But it appears that ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, is instead standing by Kimmel, who has not been taken off air, in contrast to an episode in September 2025 when Kimmel was suspended after comments he made following the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, a close friend of the Trumps. After a public outcry, ABC relented and restored Kimmel’s show.

In response, Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has brought forward a review of ABC’s station licences, which were previously not scheduled until 2028 or later. Carr’s actions follow a press conference at the White House on April 26 at which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said coverage critical of Trump, including from his Democrat opponents, was responsible for the rise in political violence in the US by creating what she called a “leftwing cult of hatred”.

These examples highlight the politicisation of “free speech” by the Trump administration as a cudgel to silence disfavoured viewpoints under the guise protecting the public from harm.

First amendment protection for free speech

But these political debates are becoming increasingly distanced from the first amendment. That is, the interpretation of the first amendment by the Supreme Court and the protections it provides to individuals and entities, including media outlets and broadcast companies, from government interference. The wider this gulf becomes, the greater the space between the principles underlying the expansive protections afforded to speech in the US and the public’s understanding of the democratic principles that underpin these protections.

This is more important than ever in the Trump era. Actions taken by the administration to target broadcast networks and individuals for political speech are precisely what the first amendment protects against. It was designed, among other things, to protect individuals, entities and the press from government interference by creating an open marketplace in which ideas compete freely.

This is particularly true for dissenting political speech, which is the core of the first amendment. This explains why government interference with speech based on “the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker” – known as “viewpoint discrimination” – is expressly prohibited.

Additionally, whether and to what extent speech is offensive is irrelevant to the protection it enjoys. When it comes to the value of public debate, the first amendment is not neutral. Indeed, as a Supreme Court judgment, Baumgartner v. United States (1944) found: “One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures.” Moreover a more recent judgment, Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (1988), found that “robust political debate” is expressly encouraged, given that such debate “is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office”.

Importantly, the Supreme Court found in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) that such criticism, inevitably, will not always be reasoned or moderate and that public figures as well as public officials will be subjected to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks”.

À lire aussi :
New York Times v Sullivan: the 60-year old Supreme Court judgment that press freedom depends on in Trump era

The motive of the speaker is also irrelevant, as the Supreme Court held in Hustler v Falwell that while a “bad motive” may be deemed controlling for tort liability and in other areas of the law, “the first amendment prohibits such a result in the area of public debate about public figures”.

Stakes couldn’t be higher

By expressly linking Democrat criticisms of the president, and pointed critiques (however off-colour) from Kimmel and his fellow political satirists to an upsurge in political violence, the Trump administration is trying to silence criticism of its actions. But it’s also clear that this behaviour is precisely what the first amendment prohibits.

Ironically, the media often portrays these episodes as “feuds” between Trump and his critics.

But when viewed through the lens of the first amendment and its core values in this context, the stakes are much higher. These episodes constitute an effort to wrest control of public discourse by interfering in the marketplace of ideas in order silence those critical of the government.

And history tells us that a government that can silence its critics often does so in pursuit of unchecked power. Viewed through this lens, perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy is the government itself.

“As the threat level rises, I urge everyone to be vigilant, as they go about their daily lives, and report any concerns they have to the police. And I can assure everyone that our world-class security services and the police are working, day and night, to keep our country safe.”

Stephen Law and Anthony Lee Dickons were trapped inside their car by a gang of armed men who allegedly carried out a brutal attack before fleeing when they heard police sirens.

Accused Daniel Simpson, 32, was one of four men caught on CCTV when the violent attack was launched in Orme Court in North Ormesby on November 6.

He told a trial at Teesside Crown Court he wanted nothing to do with the violence but accepted that he stayed at the scene while Anthony Dickons and Stephen Hall were attacked.

Mr Dickons died several days later from his injuries, having been slashed with a machete.

A jury heard how the four – Daniel Simpson, Domonic Hall, Morgan Caldwell and a 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons – who all deny murder, were driving around in a black Chevrolet containing machetes and a BB gun.

Mr Dickons was attacked in the passenger seat of his car moments after it had been rammed when the gang were hunting for his friend Mr Law after a drug deal went wrong, the court was told.

Jurors watched CCTV of four people jump out of their 4×4 and launch the brutal attack on Mr Dickons and his friend Stephen Law.

James Bourne-Arton KC, representing Simpson, took his client through what happened in the moments after the Chevrolet was rammed into the VW Passat and the violence erupted.

He said he wasn’t expecting there to be violence and was shocked about what happened.

The barrister asked: “What was going on at that point?”

Simpson replied: “I wanted no part of it. I came to the back of the car.”

He asked: “What could you see?” Simpson replied: “I saw Anthony Dickons laid on the back seat.”

When asked what happened next, he replied: “I saw Morgan Caldwell trying to hit the window in. I just saw what was going on and I didn’t want to be involved in it.”

Earlier in the trial, jurors heard Mr Dickons suffered a 15cm wound to his thigh and another 8cm wound to his buttock as he was repeatedly struck with a machete when he was trapped inside his car.

The 44-year-old died nine days later after suffering brain damage after his heart stopped beating.

Simpson, of Coledale Road in Berwick Hills, 24-year-old Domonic Hall of Greencroft Walk, 26-year-old Caldwell of Cannock Road, and the teenager, all of Middlesbrough, also deny a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm against Stephen Law.

The trial continues.

This ITV crime drama on Netflix has been labelled as “impossible to stop watching”.

Peaky Blinders fans should check out this “compelling” drama from the mind behind Homeland.

While Netflix hosts numerous ITV dramas such as Broadchurch and Prey, one overlooked gem is the 2017 mini-series Fearless.

The series stars the late Helen McCrory, renowned for her portrayal of Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders, as seasoned human rights solicitor Emma Banville.

The dedicated solicitor makes a speciality of championing hopeless cases and puts her professional standing on the line while attempting to prove the innocence of a man imprisoned 14 years previously for the murder of a 14-year-old girl.

McCrory’s performance in Fearless has clearly resonated deeply with audiences.

“I cannot sing the praises of Helen McCrory enough. What a brilliant actress, so sad she is no longer with us”, one admirer commented.

Another viewer agreed: “The acting was amazing. Helen McCrory was ‘The Truth’ in Peaky Blinders and she for sure did her thing in Fearless. It is a much-watch series.”

Other fans praised the “superior thriller”, with one viewer sharing:

“A really tightly plotted thriller that is intelligent, never sags, keeps you on a knife edge and manages in the end to both satisfy and surprise.

“Brilliant writing. Great acting. Best UK thriller I’ve seen in years.”

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A further comment read: “This series was impossible for me to stop watching…it grabbed me from episode one and I binge-watched the entire season”.

Fellow viewers labelled it “freaking awesome”, “compulsive” and “really gripping”.

Fearless not only showcases the late, great McCrory’s talents on screen, but also boasts remarkable expertise behind the camera, courtesy of creator Patrick Harbinson.

The acclaimed producer is renowned for his work on some of the world’s most celebrated television programmes, including Homeland, Law and Order: SVU, Person of Interest, 24 and Wire in the Blood.

Fearless is available to watch on Netflix.

President Donald Trump has reached into his favorite television network’s stable of personalities to be the nation’s top doctor after his first pick failed to clear Senate confirmation amid questions over her history of anti-vaccine activism.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said he is nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist who is director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New Jersey, to be Surgeon General.

The president described Saphier as “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments.”

He also praised the longtime television talking head as “an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”

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