SHOPPERS are racing to their nearest branch to snap up new curry-flavoured crisps scanning at a major supermarket for just £1.15.

The supermarket’s new range, inspired by various Indian dishes, celebrates National Curry Week which starts October 7.

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Aldi revealed two new flavoured curry crips which hit shelves in stores across the UK starting October 8.

The bargain supermarket’s new Specially Selected Hand Cooked Bombay Potato Crisps features a rich Indian spice blend to give shoppers a spicy kick.

The 150g crisps are available to buy in stores for just £1.15.

Similarly, Aldi’s new Specially Selected Hand Cooked Spiced Tikka Crisps are packed with a variety of spices, aiming to “transport shoppers to the streets of New Delhi“.

This sought-after crisp packet is also 150g and costs £1.15.

The Indian-inspired crisps can only be purchased in stores, and Aldi fans will need to act quickly before branches run out of stock.

Bear in mind availability will vary between stores – you can find Aldi’s store locator on its website.

The popular discount chain recently announced that one lucky shopper has the chance to win free shopping for a year.

To win, customers must write no more than 250 words explaining why they deserve to receive the ultimate gift.

Judges at Aldi will review all the submissions before choosing who will hold the exclusive card.

To be eligible, candidates must be aged 18 or over.

Applicants must explain why they are Aldi’s biggest superfan to have a chance at winning.

Aspiring winners must send their letters to aldicompetitions@citypress.co.uk, including their name, age, and location.

Shoppers have until October 31 at 11.59pm to apply for the Superfan Card, and one lucky customer will be notified about their win on November 30.

Richard Thornton, Communications Director at Aldi, said: “We know how passionate our customers are about Aldi, and we wanted to find a way to give something truly special back to Aldi’s biggest fan.

“We can’t wait to see the creativity and enthusiasm in the entries. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we’re thrilled to be launching it.”

It comes after McDonald’s revealed that they would bring back a menu item which has not been seen in almost a decade in just a matter of days.

And M&S customers are delighted after spotting a classic treat which has made a reappearance on supermarket shelves for the holidays.

How to bag a bargain

SUN Savers Editor Lana Clements explains how to find a cut-price item and bag a bargain…

Sign up to loyalty schemes of the brands that you regularly shop with.

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Big names regularly offer discounts or special lower prices for members, among other perks.

Sales are when you can pick up a real steal.

Retailers usually have periodic promotions that tie into payday at the end of the month or Bank Holiday weekends, so keep a lookout and shop when these deals are on.

Sign up to mailing lists and you’ll also be first to know of special offers. It can be worth following retailers on social media too.

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When buying online, always do a search for money off codes or vouchers that you can use vouchercodes.co.uk and myvouchercodes.co.uk are just two sites that round up promotions by retailer.

Scanner apps are useful to have on your phone. Trolley.co.uk app has a scanner that you can use to compare prices on branded items when out shopping.

Bargain hunters can also use B&M’s scanner in the app to find discounts in-store before staff have marked them out.

And always check if you can get cashback before paying which in effect means you’ll get some of your money back or a discount on the item.

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Television does love a bit of law and order, doesn’t it? Whether it’s Line of Duty or Slow Horses, we’re forever bombarded with small screen depictions of right being separated from wrong. Enough? Seemingly not, because here comes Showtrial to offer up more.

This is the second series of the BBC anthology, which follows a splashy court trial that prompts a media frenzy and hooks the nation. The first, broadcast in 2021, focused on a student who’d gone missing in Bristol, while this second – different story, different actors – lands in Brighton, a place where climate activists are thriving, closing roads, protecting trees, and giving the local constabulary a right old headache.

When leading activist Marcus Calderwood – bicycle, trouser clips, megaphone – is left for dead in a hit-and-run, he uses his last words to name a serving policeman as his killer. The policeman, Justin Mitchell (Michael Socha), claims his innocence with such sociopathic arrogance that only a fool would agree to represent him in court.

Enter Sam Malik (Adeel Akhtar), an earnest campaigning lawyer whose default setting is perpetual anxiety. Sam wears cheap suits, and is nursing a personal tragedy that has robbed him of sleep for months. He’s going to have his work cut out for him here; as Showtrial is so keen to suggest, the police these days do err towards the corrupt and the bent. “Not just one bad apple,” one of the climate protesters says, “the whole basket is rotten”, later hammering home the point by sneering: “Yeah, like anyone is going to believe the word of a cop these days.”

It quickly becomes clear, then, that it isn’t just Marcus on trial – it’s the entire force. No wonder his lawyer’s shoulders are stooped.

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Written by Ben Richards (a novelist who adapted the Scandi noir The Bridge into English in 2013), Showtrial packs a lot into its five episodes. Richards cherry-picks whose backstory he fleshes out, which makes the drama a little uneven. Of one leading detective, for example, we learn only that he doesn’t drink but does like bonsai trees. Meanwhile, we’re given enough biography of the prosecuting lawyer, Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin), to fill an entire series.

She’s half Arabic, and is constantly warring with her willowy sister, whose life coach – this is Brighton, remember, encourages her to avoid all contact with her because her sister is “red” while she is “yellow”, and these auras rarely mix well. They shout at one another until their mother collapses with a pulmonary embolism. Families, eh? In other episodes, we discover more about bicycle pedals than we would while watching the Tour de France.

And yet, like light coming through trees, tension is gradually built up as the trial proceeds, until it turns the knuckles white. Showtrial works best when it focuses on just Sam and Justin, the former desperate to do good and proper legal work for a client who flaunts a deeply problematic personality. Though Justin strenuously denies murder, he blames the climate protester for the death of a pregnant woman who crashed her car on a road she’d never have been driving on had the protesters not been demonstrating on her usual route. He’d held the woman in his arms as she died, and his PTSD can now only assert itself as a deadly rage.

We already know that Akhtar is one of our very best screen actors. As he showed in the first series of Sherwood and 2016’s Murdered by My Father, he’s someone who can express a panoply of human emotions with just his overcooked eyeballs and their attendant crows feet. But it is Socha (a stalwart of Shane Meadows films) who is the real revelation here – his performance vibrates with intensity. He’s amazing, terrifying, mesmeric. The last half-hour of the fourth episode – in which the two square off at one another, alternately digging through layers of self-protection and trading insults – is surely the most electrifying television of 2024.

It’s only when the credits roll that you realise you’d been holding your breath all along.

‘Showtrial’ continues next Sunday at 9pm on BBC One. All episodes are streaming on BBC iPlayer

A NEW term called “luggage rage” has been causing chaos for airline passengers – here’s how to avoid it

Airlines are beginning to increase prices for checked luggage and are cracking down on carry-ons, according to Elliot Report.

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This has led to outrage from passengers, who have dubbed it “luggage rage”, as they struggle to downsize or are forced to pay extra for their baggage.

As a result, reports of passengers having luggage tantrums have begun to spread, with no real solution in sight.

One passenger was asked to pay a whopping £50 after crew members claimed her carry-on was too big for the flight.

Unable to pay, she angrily unpacked her bag and tossed her personal belongings.

New airline rules have led companies to focus their efforts on generating more revenue from cabin luggage.

This means passengers will face higher check-in fees for their bags and smaller spaces for their carry-ons.

Some travellers have had to rip wheels off their suitcases and cut handles or straps of their backpacks to avoid paying extra.

This infuriates passengers, who are forced to rearrange their luggage in front of fellow travellers, hence the term “luggage rage.”

Jay Ternavan, founder of Jayway Travel, said: “The aircraft cabin is a stressful and vulnerable place to be and pushes people to angry outbursts more often than is the case in other places.”

To avoid becoming the latest passenger to experience “luggage rage,” travellers should check the rules of the airline they’re flying with before packing.

Airlines in Southeast Asia and Australia are notoriously strict with luggage size, Elliot Report added.

One passenger was asked to pay an extra £40 by an Australian airline because their bag was over the limit by less than a pound.

Another tip for travellers is to avoid over-packing to prevent giving the airline a chance to impose a fee.

Instead, passengers should aim to fit all their luggage into a small, regulation-size carry-on while being careful not to overdo it.

Kimberly Davis, travel advisor, said: “Look, if you haven’t figured out by now that your oversized carry-on isn’t going to fit over your seat, I don’t know where you’ve been for the last decade.”

Finally, to avoid having a meltdown over luggage travellers should steer clear of airlines known for trying to squeeze the most out of their passengers.

Airlines that advertise themselves as “ultra-low fare” or “discount” carrier are likely to cause a large amount of “luggage rage” amongst its customers.

However, Thomas Plante, a Californian psychologists, claims the easiest way to avoid “luggage rage” is to change your mindset.

“Lower your expectations,” he added.

It comes after travellers with hand luggage breathed a sigh of relief after European airlines revealed that they hoped to unify bag dimensions.

And passengers have been left fuming after being forced to check in their hand luggage – only to find the overhead lockers empty anyway.

Iran is driven by desperation in its current conduct, the former commander of American forces in the Middle East said in an interview Sunday.

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” former CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie, now retired, said: “Iran is the country that’s in a corner. Their strike against Israel several nights ago was not particularly successful. Their principal ally in the region, Hezbollah has been decapitated, and its own offensive capability is gravely limited. Hezbollah’s is gravely limited. So Iran’s on their back heel.”

Last week, Iran launched a missile strike against Israel, a country that it considers a rogue nation, but its missiles did only limited damage. Iran was responding to recent attacks on its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon; those attacks killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and caused other casualties, both among Hezbollah and civilians. Fighting continues in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, even as fighting continues in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, another Iranian proxy.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare appearance Friday at public prayers, praised those who died fighting Israel. “Our resisting people in Lebanon and Palestine, you brave fighters, you loyal and patient people, these martyrdoms and the blood that was shed shouldn’t shake your determination but make you more persistent,” Iran’s supreme leader said.

Israel, which said that most of Iran’s missiles were intercepted, has threatened to retaliate for its strike.

“Israel has a lot of choices here,” McKenzie told host Margaret Brennan. “They can choose for something that would be very escalatory in terms of a strike against the Supreme Leader himself, perhaps, or against the nuclear program, or against the oil infrastructure, or they could look at military intelligence targets. They have a wide variety of options that they can choose from. They have the capability to execute most of those attacks.”

Though he said Israel has a right to strike back, President Joe Biden said Wednesday he wouldn’t be in favor of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

McKenzie, in response, said he thought it unwise to “take a potential target off the menu” and thereby make it easier for the other country to plan its defense.

“Having said that,” McKenzie said, “the Iranian nuclear target is a very difficult target. We have special capabilities that allow us to get at it. The Israelis do not have all of those capabilities. They can certainly hurt this target if they choose to, if they choose to strike it. But again, because of its size, complexity and scope and how it’s expanded over the last 10 years, it’s a very difficult target to take out.”

Brennan wondered about the “risk of unintended consequences,” the possibility of triggering Iran to consider actually building a nuclear bomb.

“Margaret, it’s always been my belief that the Iranians flirt with breakout,” McKenzie said, “with getting fissile material to create a bomb in order to extract concessions from us.”

He added: “They also know if they cross that line, you can’t go back. That’s a Rubicon that can’t be recrossed.”

McKenzie, a retired Marine Corps general, was CENTCOM commander from 2019 to 2022. The command include responsibilities for the Middle East and parts of Asia, including a number of countries that were part of the former Soviet Union.

Speaking to Brennan, he also said he found it entirely believable that Iran’s leaders, driven by “desperation” as they seek to stay in power, could be targeting former President Donald Trump as he seeks to regain the presidency.

“They view the election of President Trump as a direct threat to that regime preservation,” he said.

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In September 2023, private K-12 schools in Arizona decided to raise their tuition between 6 and 20 percent in response to experimental vouchers given to families to make private education more accessible, according to an article by Neal Morton for the Hechinger Report. In July 2023, Arizona became the first state to allow universal school choice and provide public funding for families to aid in private school tuition and fees.

This rise in tuition costs across the state happened only months after the state approval and will once again exclude the same families the decision intended to serve. As part of the initiative, the state provided families with about $7,000 of public funding to reduce the costs of non-public education. However, those opposed to Arizona’s empowerment scholarship accounts, or ESAs, maintain that this plan won’t benefit low-income families.

Nik Nartowicz, a state policy counselor for the legal advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says the average cost of tuition will exceed the amount of money provided by the vouchers, not including “transportation and uniform costs.” While some of the private schools raised their prices to keep in line with inflation, others increased their tuition by more than 20 percent. In 2022, Arizona made all children K-12 eligible for an ESA. The rise in tuition came as a surprise to parents with children already enrolled in private schools. 

Pam Lang sends her son with autism to a private school for students with disabilities. Lang confirmed that the tuition for her son’s school increased by $4,000 and said that the parents weren’t notified of the increase until the bill for the next school year arrived. 

“Parents are faced with the possibility of having to drop other things they use ESAs for, like tutors—an expense that also increased for my son,” Lang told the Hechinger Report.

The rise in tuition has prevented low-income families from enrolling in private schools and has also affected families who could previously afford private education. Still, some conservatives maintain that vouchers and private school options help students and families out of “failing” public schools.

In July 2023, the New York Times reported that the vouchers for education in Arizona increased the accessibility of private education to more students. However, the Hechinger Report shows that, since the launch of the program in September 2023, private schools have increased their tuition, making them even less accessible than they were previously. The New York Times story noted repeatedly that the idea for the vouchers came from Tom Horne, a conservative superintendent of Arizona Public Instruction, and talked specifically about the progress other Republican-dominated states are making in providing similar resources. 

Corporate media coverage has noted Arizona’s efforts and how the voucher plan might drain public school resources but hasn’t explored the implications of Arizona’s existing state codes, which have no requirements for “the accreditation, approval, licensing or registration of private schools in Arizona,” among other concerns. Arizona’s initiative doesn’t outline regulations to keep private schools from increasing their costs, which could continue throughout the year and could keep students stagnant in under-resourced schools, even with additional state funding.

Source: Neal Morton, “Arizona Gave Families Public Money for Private Schools. Then Private Schools Raised Tuition,” Hechinger Report, November 27,  2023.

Student Researchers: Sydney Getty, Jordan Guillette, Joanne Pratt, Alexsia Rose, and Emmeline Weeks (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler and Jeewon Chon (University of Massachusetts Amherst)