A teenage tourist plunged to her death from a cliff swing in China after raising concerns about her safety harness.

The accident happened at the Maliuyan Waterfall in Huayin, southwestern China, on May 3.

The 16-year-old tourist, identified only by her surname Liu, was strapped into a harness as staff prepared to send her out over the gorge.

Excited friends were heard talking and laughing as Liu, with a cloth draped behind her like a cape, was moved towards the edge of the platform.

But Liu was heard shouting several times that the rope was ‘not tight enough’ before she left the secure area.

Moments later, as she was pushed out over the drop, she suddenly slipped down a few inches as if something had come loose.

One person on the platform could be seen reaching towards her, but Liu then plunged into the gorge below.

Local reports said the safety rope snapped as soon as she left the platform, sending her falling onto the cliff face.

Liu survived the initial fall but died on her way to the hospital, according to local media. The cliff swing was reportedly being operated by an outdoor adventure company identified as Chongqing Adventure Camp.

The company had promoted the attraction on its WeChat public account back in March.

Officials have since closed the scenic area for rectification and launched an investigation.

Local authorities have preliminarily classified the incident as a production safety responsibility accident.

The park announced it would remain shut until May 10 for equipment inspection and maintenance.

A staff member for the operator said the company was in contact with Liu’s family and was cooperating with the authorities.

The accident became one of the top trending topics on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, where users criticised the operators for allegedly ignoring Liu’s warnings.

One user said: ‘They disregarded human life.

‘A small oversight has taken away the future of this young girl.’

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Emergency services were called to Albert Road in Consett, where a man is understood to have fallen from the first-floor flat above the Demi Sports Bar, at around 10.55pm on Monday (May 4).

He was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, where police say he remains in a critical condition today (Wednesday, May 6).

Demi Sports Bar in Consett (Image: NORTHERN ECHO)

An investigation is underway and police are appealing for witnesses to the incident to come forward.

This afternoon a fire service car remained parked up outside while fire service staff were inside the venue.

The County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service has been contacted for comment.

A fire service car outside the Demi Sports Bar in Consett (Image: NORTHERN ECHO)

A Durham Police spokesperson said: “An investigation is underway after a man sustained life-threatening injuries in Consett on Monday (May 4).

“Officers were called at 10.55pm following reports that a man in his fifties had fallen from a first-floor flat on Albert Road.

“The man was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, where he remains in a critical condition.

“An investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident is ongoing, and officers would like to speak to anyone who witnessed the incident.

“Call Durham Constabulary on 101 with any information, quoting incident number 532 of May 4.”

Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the religious rhetoric deployed by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent weeks — and, in contrast, view Pope Leo XIV positively as the pontiff has hit back at the administration, according to a poll.

Trump’s Truth Social post of an AI-generated image depicting him as Jesus, which he was forced to delete after backlash from the religious right,went down incredibly badly with Americans, with 87 percent expressing their disapproval in the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

A further 69 percent disliked it when Hegseth prayed that there would be “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” during a religious service at the Pentagon at the end of March.

Trump’s social media post and Hegseth’s invocation of his religion have also upset Republicans and MAGA voters. Trump’s Jesus social media post, which he later claimed he thought depicted himself as a doctor, was viewed negatively by 80 percent of the president’s 2024 voters and 79 percent of Republicans, according to the poll.

By contrast, more than half of Americans agreed with Leo, who has taken a stand against the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown and the Iran war. The poll found that 66 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to the pontiff’s message that war should be rejected.

Leo is viewed favorably by 41 percent of Americans who are familiar with him, compared to 16 percent who view him unfavorably, the poll found.

The pontiff has become Trump’s latest target after he denounced “the delusion of omnipotence” fueling the war in Iran in a not-so subtle dig at the president. Leo’s intervention followed Trump’s extraordinary threat to “wipe out an entire civilization.”

In the latest saga between the president and the pontiff, Trump baselessly accused Leo of “endangering Catholics” by supporting Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

“I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people, but I guess, if it’s up to the Pope,” Trump said Sunday. “He thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”​

The Pope hit back at the claim Wednesday without directly referencing the president. “The mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to preach peace,” he said. “If someone wants to criticise me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so truthfully. For years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point.”

The tension comes ahead of a high-stakes meeting between Leo and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will meet at the Vatican Thursday for a “frank conversation” about the administration’s policies.

Hegseth, meanwhile, has leaned into his Evangelical Christianity at the Pentagon, often framing the war in Iran through the lens of his faith and weaving scripture into his remarks at press briefings.

The former Fox News host has prayed for “overwhelming violence” against his enemies and insisted that God stands with the U.S. against Iran, a Muslim-majority nation of some 90 million people.

Experts previously told The Independent that his language potentially undermines the constitutional separation of church and state, alienates patriotic non-Christian service members and risks supercharging the conflict with Tehran, whose leaders are Islamic fundamentalists.

“This is completely, totally unprecedented,” said Michael Weinstein, the president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “He’s making it clear that this is Jesus versus Muhammad.”

The Pentagon dismissed the criticisms in a previous statement to The Independent.

“Secretary Hegseth, along with millions of Americans, is a proud Christian,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said.

“The Christian faith is woven deeply into the fabric of our nation and shared by America’s wartime leaders like President George Washington, who prayed for his troops at Valley Forge, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gifted Bibles to American soldiers during WW2 and encouraged them to read it,” Wilson added in an emailed response.

Brendan Rascius contributed to this report

Baba Ganoush Catering says the move to larger premises allows it to offer more and better services to a wider area, as well as saving it money.

The company has operated for ten years, with sister business Dining by Matthew Hyde launching in 2019, undertaking catering for weddings, corporates and events.

The two firms were based in Rose Avenue in York Business Park, Poppleton, until the move in January this year.

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Director Ashley said: “We needed to have more space to broaden our offering. It’s much more economical to be out of York.”

Ashley Hyde outside her new premises (Image: Darren Greenwood)

The new premises feature a large food preparation area, as well as a dining space and bar area.

Before the offices, kitchen and storage areas were separate and Ashley says “was becoming too expensive.”

Ashley Hyde outside her new premises (Image: Darren Greenwood)

The entrepreneur and her chef husband found the new location, which was previously occupied by an air conditioning cooling company. It also offers outside parking.

Ashley continued: “For years we have been looking for a space to add a string to our bow.

Lamb cutlets (Image: Darren Greenwood)

“We do tasting events here for our couples. People have told us how they like the industrial style kitchen. They tell us they love watching people cook. This is very popular in London.

“Open plan kitchen events for weddings and corporates are every popular in London and the US. We want to be the first in Yorkshire. Come to our industrial kitchen. Our chefs are really friendly.”

The guests enjoy their food at Baba Ganoush (Image: Darren Greenwood)

Baba Ganoush works with a range of venues and businesses across the City of York but with hospitality being increasingly competitive, Ashley says the business needs to be flexible and change tack, offering more corporate events, corporate lunches, corporate canapes and dinners.

A selection of salads (Image: Darren Greenwood)

Increasingly, people want to sample the food before making a booking and the new venue makes this easier.

Another trend, Ashley says, is people are switching back from small sharing plates to individual plates of hearty food. People are also loving a tiramisu.

Baba Ganoush employs five in events and six chefs, who now serve a much wider area. The Thorp Arch location is also convenient for Leeds, Harrogate and Wetherby, as well as York.

A selection of desserts (Image: Darren Greenwood)

Ashley works with a range of suppliers including Sykes House Farm Butchers, Tarbetts of Wetherby for fish, Dales for Fruit and veg, as well as Simply Gorgeous Cocktails.

She said: “Our full ethos is we like to do really nice food done really well. I think we have a really nice group of suppliers who do great food.”

Adrian Pettitt of Simply Gorgeous Cocktails (Image: Darren Greenwood)

Ashley added: “We were spending so much money in York on rent, it became difficult to ensure quality in other areas. We are in a fantastic location, which is reasonably priced, which means we can get the better-quality food.”

And judging by what was served up to guests, Ashley  and Matthew look to have the right recipe for even more success.

A recent trip to Haworth, in West Yorkshire, got me thinking about Anne Brontë, who died 177 years ago this month. Stepping into St Michael and All Angels’ Church, a carved stone pillar prominently declares the location of the Brontë family vault. All members of the Brontë family – parents Patrick and Maria, sisters Elizabeth and Maria who died young, the rebellious brother Branwell, and Emily and Charlotte – are all listed. Yet, not mentioned is Anne Brontë, who is buried in Scarborough, almost 100 miles away.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are repeatedly included on lists of Britain’s favourite novels and are firmly ensconced in the popular literary canon.

Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey occasionally receive an honourable mention, but are often nowhere in sight. Like their author, they have been too frequently overlooked. Googling for articles on Anne Brontë brings up very few hits. I began to wonder: why is that?

Finding Anne

Agnes Grey, A Novel was the name of Anne’s first book, published in December 1847. She had been working on the text for many months before sending it off to the publisher Thomas Cautley Newby in July of that year. Emily’s Wuthering Heights was also accepted by Newby at the same time. It was a painful two months later that Charlotte finally found a publisher for her book, Jane Eyre.

Unluckily for her sisters, Charlotte’s publisher was more proactive than their own, and Jane Eyre became a sensation. Newby then decided to print Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, riding on the coattails of Charlotte’s success. More naturalistic than Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, but similarly focused on the life of a poor governess, Anne’s novel had been upstaged and was received, as the author Samantha Ellis notes, as a “pale imitation of Jane Eyre”.

Even worse, the gender-neutral pseudonyms the sisters had chosen to hide their identities (Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell), had ensured that the three books were thought to have been by only one author. Anne was not disheartened by Charlotte’s success or these authorship disputes however, and soon embarked on her second literary project.

Appallingly, many editions of Anne second and most famous work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, have been abridged. In 1854, overzealous publisher Thomas Hodgson slashed huge chunks of text which featured controversial subject matter detailing the protagonist’s concerns about her husband’s depraved behaviour, so that the novel would fit neatly into a single volume.

Brontë scholars declare this to be a “corrupt text”, which cuts four pages of the novel’s opening, all expletives (filler words), 25 additional paragraphs and most of chapter 28. While more recent editions of the novel have reprinted the original 1848 text, many of us, without knowing, have read the potted version.

This censorship of Anne’s text is frankly unacceptable, as poor editing aside, much contextual information which she included for a reason has been removed. Charlotte’s opinion of her sister’s book, writing in a letter in 1850 that it “hardly appears desirable to preserve”, also damaged Anne Brontë’s reputation further.

Far from Haworth

Another factor in her neglect is that Anne’s grave is miles away from the rest of her family’s. She travelled to Scarborough in 1849 in an attempt to ease the symptoms of the tuberculosis that killed her only three days after her arrival.

Only a very dedicated Brontë fan would follow in her footsteps and make the pilgrimage to Scarborough in addition to Haworth. This Yorkshire town will always be the main site of the Brontë sisters fandom as long as their home, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, remains. Anne Brontë does not have a formal memorial in Haworth, while the rest of her family is buried there. This sets her apart even more.

Perhaps it is simply that Anne was the youngest in a remarkable family, and so in death is overlooked as she may have been in life. Or her stories are not the gothic fantasies featuring troubled and problematic literary heroes like Rochester and Heathcliff we immediately associate with the Brontë name.

Instead, Anne Brontë’s works are visceral and real, commenting unflinchingly on the dark sides of human nature: cruelty and violence to children and women, adultery, alcoholism, and coercive control being just some of the topics she covers. Contemporary reviewers called the novel “brutal” and “coarse”.

Utterly shocking at the time, with its descriptions of alcohol abuse and a female protagonist leaving her unhappy marriage, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often hailed as a feminist masterpiece. Yet, this does not tie into the romantic ideal readers expect. Wuthering Heights grapples with many of the same themes, but while that novel is viewed as a gothic romance, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered by many as a social-realist text.

This enduring oversight could be for all of these reasons or a combination of some. Still, I resent the descriptions of Anne by journalists such as Charlotte Cory as the “runt of the literary litter”, and urge readers and Brontë fans to give her work a chance in its own right.

The 1996 mini-series of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is available to watch online. To me it is a travesty that it is 30 years since there was an adaptation of this novel. And there has never been a big-screen treatment of Agnes Grey, while Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have seen myriad film versions. A fine writer and one who is equal to her sisters, Anne Brontë deserves better.

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