Dolly Parton has sung disco, pop, bluegrass and even metal – but for all her genre-hopping, she has always come back to country. From the disco bop of Baby I’m Burnin’ to the metal-influenced Bygones, featuring Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Parton’s career has repeatedly pushed beyond country’s boundaries while remaining firmly rooted in it.

Although some of her country fan-base waned as she became a pop star, Parton ultimately belonged to country music. She had 25 number one singles in the Billboard’s country music charts, ten Academy of Country Music Awards and her 1999 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame to prove it.

Country music has had something of a revival in recent years. This has been accompanied by a revaluation of its cultural contributions, partly driven by the popularity of artists such as Parton. But country music can be a hard sell. The oft-repeated response of “anything except rap or country” to questions of musical taste speak to how it has appeared as an example of bad music, widely disliked outside a core audience. If everyone loves Parton, it does not follow that everyone loves country music.

Frequently conservative in its aesthetics and politics, country music is associated with particular people, tropes and values. Many of these associations can be traced to the early years of its invention. What would come to be called country music (the term came into use in the 1940s) had its origins in a racially segregated music industry, where record companies directed “old-time”, “cowboy” or “mountain” music toward white consumers.

Often trading in nostalgic and romantic ideas of the simplicities of rural life, these records were framed as belonging to an authentic tradition the US south. Country’s cultural associations have endured efforts to make it more mainstream, including the emergence of the Nashville Sound in the 1950s: a style of music production that smooths out the “rougher” edges of country performance by incorporating some of pop’s conventions.

Parton, with her rhinestones and wigs, her Tennessee twang, her Appalachian rags-to-riches life story and her all-American patriotism, fits with many ideals of who country music is by and for. Country’s musical markers – uncomplicated melodies, instrumentation such as banjos, fiddles, guitars and mandolins, adept storytelling about everyday life, and lyrical themes of love, work, family, religion and death – can all be found across her prolific catalogue of “little simple songs” (to borrow Parton’s understated description of one of her most successful compositions, I Will Always Love You).

At the same time, Parton reshaped country music in her own image. As journalist Natalie Weiner has pointed out, when Parton first signed to Monument records in 1965 at the age of 19, her high-pitched voice was considered incompatible with country.

Early releases from this time, such as her 60s girl group style Busy Signal, were part of efforts to market Parton as a pop singer. The problem wasn’t just her voice. Parton was having success as a country songwriter in Nashville, but during this time country music and its industry were male-dominated fields, and commercially successful women singer-songwriters were few and far between. Notable exceptions include Loretta Lynn, whose 1966 hit single You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take my Man) is a rather less mannered counterpart to Parton’s Jolene.

Benefitting from the groundwork of figures like Lynn, Parton’s musical talent won out, and in 1967 her first album Hello, I’m Dolly, announced her arrival as a country singer and songwriter.

Subverting country

Country has often traded in reductive gendered tropes, with women frequently appearing in songs as either as loving angels or wayward seductresses. But Parton was a key contributor to a body of songs that offered a richer and more complex account of womanhood.

Just Because I’m a Woman, for example, asserts equality in the right to make (sexual) “mistakes”, while Your Ole Handy Man expresses frustration at having to do all the work around the home for a man that behaves as if he is “as helpless as a baby”. Some of these songs, however, proved too much for country music’s institutions. Her gothic ballad The Bridge, narrating the desperation of an abandoned pregnant woman, and Down from Dover, a song about out-of-wedlock pregnancy loss, were both banned by radio stations.

In other instances, Parton has taken up country’s tropes only to refigure them – 9 to 5, for example, belongs to country music’s tradition of (anti)work songs. What was at stake, however, was not the country’s typical work imaginary of factories, mining or trucks but the feminised, white-collar grind of typewriters and toxic office politics. The sentiment landed. In 1981 9 to 5 spent two weeks at number one in Billboard’s Top 100 chart.

In 1997, Parton dissolved her fan club, which, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame, had previously been one of the staunchest in country music, due to falling numbers among her core country fan base. Although her success exceeded it and distanced some original fans, Parton often returned to country music.

After dissolving her fan club, Parton released her critically acclaimed bluegrass trilogy – The Grass is Blue (1999), Little Sparrow (2001) and Halo & Horns (2002). 2008’s Backwoods Barbie and 2014’s Blue Smoke (the 44th of her 49 studio albums) were grounded in her distinctive blend of country pop.

Parton’s skilful negotiation the demands of the genre, while remaining resolute in doing country her own way, deserves recognition among her many achievements.

Three staff members from the Stars and Stripes military news outlet are suing to challenge their recent firings by the Pentagon, accusing the Trump administration of violating their First Amendment free speech rights to speak out against government interference in their work.

Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and Middle East reporter Lara Korte are named as plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington, D.C.

The Pentagon, which partially funds the news outlet, fired them last week. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the suit’s allegations.

Slavin says he was dismissed for insubordination after giving an interview to CBS News in which he objected to potential censorship by the U.S. military. Korte participated in the same interview. Their lawsuit says they were punished in retaliation for publishing a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

“Stripes’ historical editorial independence is critical to its core mission of gathering and providing unbiased, credible journalism to the U.S. military community, particularly servicemembers and their families stationed overseas,” the suit says.

Lederer was dismissed shortly after announcing his impending retirement, effective at the end of September. He said the Pentagon had installed a new deputy publisher, an active duty service member, under him at the newspaper without his prior knowledge.

The suit’s plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, Government Accountability Project and a Yale Law School clinic.

The Defense Department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the named defendants.

GTA 6 has made its Netflix debut, with over 20 minutes of raw gameplay footage and dozens of amazing little details you may not have noticed.

You get an idea of exactly how big GTA 6 is going to be when the debut of 26 minutes of only lightly edited gameplay footage manages to crash Netflix. It was only down for a few minutes, when the extended look went live on Thursday evening, but it immediately gave a sense that the whole world was watching.

As leaked beforehand, the video is 26 minutes long and surprisingly it is nothing but raw gameplay, with no voiceovers explaining the features, no talking heads waxing lyrical about Rockstar Games, and only a brief flash of a logo.

It’s the first time a video game has ever been promoted in this way and because there was so little context given for anything it was very easy to miss little details and hints at gameplay features that haven’t yet been confirmed. So here’s what we noticed, but do let us know what we missed because there’s bound to be much more.

Authentic clothing – weirdly, the first thing to make us go wow was the way the T-shirt Jason was wearing at the start moved as he did, with incredibly realistic looking cloth physics.

So many people – it goes without saying but the graphics were amazing throughout. However, the thing that really stands out is just how many people are in almost every scene, with dozens of highly-detailed character models just hanging around and adding to the atmosphere.

Such a pretty face – everything about the graphics seems almost photorealistic but it’s the facial animation that stands out as truly exceptional. Although it’s not just the technology itself but the acting performances, with Lucia’s actress being particularly good, with some very subtle facial acting.

No instructions – this is something that Rockstar may have been purposefully hiding for the sake of the video but there didn’t seem to be any object prompts on screen, telling you what to do next. Red Dead Redemption 2 often went overboard with these, making it seem like you were just following the developer’s stage directions, so it’s good to see them dial back on that.

Press D to drink – what you could see in several scenes though were button prompts for various mundane activities, like taking a sip of a drink at a club or holding Jason’s hand. These didn’t seem to be vital gameplay actions but instead just small interactions to add to the mood.

Off the wall – during the opening drug bust scene you see one of the drug dealers push a police officer straight through a wall. This may have been a one-off gag, but it does suggest that perhaps the game feature a fair amount of destructible scenery, but there wasn’t an obvious way to tell in any of the other scenes.

Prêt à porter – all modern GTA games allow you to change your clothes but the video went out of its way to make this clear, not just because Jason and Lucia were talking about it but because Lucia in particular looks completely different from scene to scene, especially when she’s wearing a wig.

Satire is not dead – Dan Houser said that satire was impossible in a post-Trump world and now that he’s left Rockstar, as head writer, it was possible there’d be a shift in tone for GTA 6. That wasn’t really evident from any of the footage though, which set some time aside to show some fake TV ads poking fun at American consumerism in very much the traditional GTA manner.

Knight Rider – if there was one disappointment from the video it’s that Rockstar hasn’t found any way to make car conversations seem more dynamic. Even in the video there were long segments of driving down a road while the car seemed to be talking to itself. Some sort of insert to show who’s talking, or a 70s style split screen effect, would surely have been better but conversations on the move seem to work exactly the same as GTA 5.

Text message – the above is all the more disappointing because the way texts are displayed was very visual and clever, with big glowing text bubbles appear next to the character, to show what they were saying and reading.

Doing crimes – not that it’s much of a revelation but Jason and Lucia take part in an awful lot of robberies, including what seems to be the one from the very first trailer. This appears to be more than just optional side missions and instead their main way of making money, at least at the start of the game.

Shoot the tyres – the other thing the game seems to have a lot of is car chases where Jason is hanging out the back shooting at a seemingly infinite supply of police cars and helicopters. It looks great though, especially the bit where a fellow bank robber jumps in the back of their car and asks for help.

Switching sides – another thing that seems to work exactly the same as GTA 5 is how you switch characters. At one point the point of view zooms out and refocus from Lucia to Jason, just as it worked in the last game. However, it’s not clear if you can switch more quickly when the pair are near each other. You do seem to change characters during one of the chases but it seems to be the game switching it, not the player.

Welcome to the party – the sequence at the end, with Jason and Lucia acting as bodyguards in a skyscraper overrun by terrorists was very reminiscent of Die Hard, especially when Jason gets hold of a walkie talkie and dumps a dead bad guy in the lift. Movie homages have always been a big part of GTA and that doesn’t seem to have changed for the new game.

Bullet time – it’s impossible to tell how much the gunplay has improved from just watching a video but it certainly seemed very slick and John Wick-inspired. It’s also clear that there’s a slow motion affect available, although how exactly you activate it remains to be seen.

A world of adventure – there was a ton of other activities, many of which have been hinted at by previous trailers and screenshots, but which were only shown for a second, so here’s what stuck out to us:

• Piloting airboats in a swamp
• Basketball
• Suba diving
• Weightlifting
• Swimming
• Jet-skiing
• Using binoculars to spy on someone using VR
• Kayaking
• Visiting a strip club
• Some form of motorsport
• Sunbathing
• Shooting gallery
• Motorcross
• Base jumping
• Flying a seaplane
• Piloting various boats on the ocean

There was also a part where there’s a car chase going on and it’s being livestreamed, with fake comments appearing on the left. Whether that’s a one-off or something that can happen with multiple activities isn’t yet clear.

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Eddie Copley-Farnell, who runs The Curious Coffee Company, spoke to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) about his plans to open a new café in Clifton.

The business owner said he was hopeful the new venue would prove popular, adding it was set to open in November with works set to begin in the coming weeks.

It comes after a planning application to convert the vacant Boots pharmacy, which closed in February 2024, into the new café was approved on Wednesday, August 26.

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The Curious Coffee Company café planned for Clifton would seat up to 40 people.

The company already has branches in Haxby and Easingwold, which opened 10 and 13 years ago respectively, along with a bakery in Brandsby.

Mr Copley-Farnell told LDRS he hoped the Clifton café would be as busy as the business’ other two sites once they get established there.

The business owner said: “I used to live in the area until I was 18 so this is quite important to me.

“My wife used to be a pharmacist so it’s nice that we’re taking this space on to do what we do now.

“It’s a bit of a case of us sticking our finger in the air but I think it’ll be a food location and I’m hopeful it’ll work a treat and we’ll have people queuing for miles.

A drink being served at a Curious Coffee Company café (Image: The Curious Coffee Company/Facebook)

“We’ll serve coffees and baked goods during the day and I’m hoping that we can do pizzas on some of the evenings.

“I’m hoping to spend a bit of time in Clifton, at least in the beginning.

“We’ve got a fantastic team, some of which will come with us, but if we’re as busy as I’m hoping to be we could bring 10 or 15 jobs to Clifton.

“It’ll be nice to bring that building back to life because it’s been empty for a while and be part of what’s going on at Clifton Green which is great.”

Plans approved by City of York Council on Wednesday are set to see new hanging and facia signs installed as part of the conversion.

It would open from 7.30am to 5pm on Monday and Tuesday, until 10pm from Wednesday to Friday, from 8.30am to 11pm on Saturday and from 9am to 9pm on Sunday and bank holidays.

An application to licence the unit for alcohol sales has also been lodged and is open for public comments until Wednesday, September 23.

The Lindsay Clancy trial, an unfathomable story of family, murder and alleged postpartum psychosis, has played out in a Massachusetts courtroom and held a global audience in thrall over the last six and a half weeks.

Clancy, who once spent her summers vacationing on Cape Cod with her husband and three young children, has spent much of this July and August in a courtroom, standing trial for the first-degree murder of her five-year-old daughter Cora, three-year-old son Dawson and eight-month-old son Callan. 

If convicted, she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.  

Clancy’s team do not dispute that the former labor and delivery nurse killed her children but argue that she cannot be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

But according to several legal experts who spoke with the Daily Mail, while many are asking whether the jury will deliver a verdict of guilty or not guilty, there’s a very real possibility that this high profile, tumultuous trial is heading towards a third outcome: a mistrial. 

That, said criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Mark Bederow, bluntly would be a ‘disaster.’

Bederow told the Daily Mail: ‘There’s no way the Plymouth DA is going to reverse course,’ the former prosecutor said. ‘They’re so dug in they almost have no choice, politically, but to dig in deeper.’ 

‘Can you imagine a case like this being retried?’ he asked. ‘It would be a horrible thing.’ 

Clancy is standing trial for the first-degree murder of her five-year-old daughter Cora, three-year-old son Dawson and eight-month-old son Callan

Clancy had sent her then-husband Patrick out to pick up dinner and when he returned to their coastal Duxbury home, he discovered that his wife had strangled their three children

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If convicted, she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole

Dozens of witnesses have testified to the horror that met Clancy’s then-husband, Patrick, on January 24, 2023. Clancy had sent him out to pick up dinner and when he returned to their coastal Duxbury home, he discovered that his wife had strangled their three children with exercise resistance bands. 

She then slit her wrists and neck and jumped from a window on the top floor of the house.

Now paralyzed from the waist down and wheelchair bound as a result, the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse has cast a pitiful figure at the defendant’s table.

James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent and law enforcement expert, is also fearful that it could come down to a hung jury. He said he sensed that there will be one or two jurors who may hold out to hang the jury, which would force the state to try the case again.

‘The prosecution was better today and it will resonate in juror’s minds,’ Gagliano tweeted after both sides finished their closing arguments on Thursday.

‘The last thing the jury takes away (closing arguments today) might very well be what makes the case. Still fear a hung jury. But now feel conviction on a lesser charge than Murder One (at the very least) will be the order of the day. Time will tell.’

The Plymouth District Attorney’s office has asked the jury not to view the trial as a public debate on maternal health. But former judge Carol Erskine told the Daily Mail that would be hard to avoid. 

Witness after witness told the court that they knew Clancy had suicidal thoughts and called a crisis hotline more than once, and still, could not admit her for hospitalization because there was no suicide plan in place.

‘I’ve seen suicides in my courtrooms,’ Erskine said. ‘Not one case that I ever saw was anything other than impulsive. The notion that there has to be a plan in Massachusetts in order to get the degree of help you need is outrageous and needs to change.’

The fact that this is a case that came to trial at all is a source of outrage to some. But Bederow told the Daily Mail that it was one prosecutors had no choice but to bring, however difficult. Yet, while he defended the decision to prosecute, he had harsh words for the way in which the case has been argued.

‘This is a very clunky, choppy, disjointed case put together by a prosecution team who just doesn’t seem to appreciate the intricacies and nuances of these kinds of cases.’

Bederow, who has represented clients struggling with mental health, said it has been ‘shocking’ to watch prosecutors portray Clancy as a ‘selfish’ mother who ‘calculated’ the murder of her children and faked her own suicide.

He described the prosecution’s approach to mental health as ‘very antiquated,’ expecting a defendant who is claiming an insanity defense to be ‘standing in a corner, staring at the wall, rocking back and forth, talking nonsense.’

In Massachusetts, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution when a defendant makes an insanity defense, meaning the defendant only has to prove they were insane at the time of the killing. Meanwhile, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant could not conform her actions to the tenets of the law.

Her lawyers and her ex-husband, who has now remarried and says he has forgiven her, claim that her actions were contaminated by more than a dozen medications that she had been prescribed for her worsening psychiatric condition and suicidal thoughts. Clancy is suing her medical providers for failing to properly diagnose and treat her.

The heart-wrenching trial, which is being televised, has seen a swell in public interest, and Clancy has garnered support both online and in-person.

The case, which has renewed criticisms over how the mental health system treats women, has not only sparked conspiracy theories on social media, but drawn hundreds of women to Plymouth, where they have stood outside the courthouse in pink clothing, protested at the state hospital where Clancy is being held and raised more than $1 million for family through a GoFundMe.

Clancy has also received support from Russell ‘Rusty’ Yates, the ex-husband of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. After being convicted of five counts of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison, Andrea’s verdict was overturned and she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

‘If someone driving a car lost control because of a sudden heart attack and the car ran over and killed a pedestrian would you convict the driver of murder?’ asked Yates’s attorney, Wendell Odom, Jr, who wrote on the subject for the Daily Mail. ‘The answer is obvious.’

For his part, Bederow said he’ll ‘never understand’ why prosecutors didn’t try to get ahead of Clancy’s mental health struggles by acknowledging them – a move that could have helped them gain credibility and trust with the jury.

Instead, he said, the DA’s office likely ‘pissed off’ jurors with their ‘wooden’ treatment of Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick and their ‘inappropriate’ ‘stunt’ of asking Clancy’s former mother-in-law Susan about whether her Catholic faith led her to consider murder as ‘a mortal sin.’

‘That’s a dog whistle for the jury,’ Bederow said of the Catholicism question. ‘I can’t fathom that was an accident.’

On Monday, religion was raised again by a state witness, prompting the defense to move for a mistrial.

Judge William Sullivan denied the motion but instructed the jury to disregard the statement from the prosecution’s psychologist, who testified that he had asked Clancy if she knew suicide was a ‘mortal sin.’

‘Raising Catholicism or religion is a violation under Massachusetts General Rules of Evidence,’ Erskine said. ‘It’s expressly barred.’

The heart wrenching trial, which is being livestreamed, has seen a swell in public interest, and Clancy has garnered support both online and in-person

Her lawyers claim that her actions were contaminated by more than a dozen medications that she had been prescribed for her worsening psychiatric condition and suicidal thoughts

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The case has renewed criticisms over how the mental health system treats women and has drawn hundreds of women to Plymouth, where they have stood outside the courthouse in pink clothing

Clancy has also received support from Russell ‘Rusty’ Yates, the ex-husband of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001

She called the question that was asked of Susan, ‘one of the most egregious mistakes I’ve ever seen by a prosecutor.’ Although the DA’s office called it an accident, the retired Massachusetts judge said it seemed ‘intentional’ because it would be shocking for a prosecutor not to know that rule.

When Erskine first learned that the case was going to trial and that Clancy was being charged with first-degree murder, she wasn’t surprised. But she noted that those charges came ‘very quickly,’ before there was any investigation into Clancy’s mental health issues.

‘The issue of criminal responsibility is something the Commonwealth may have underestimated,’ Erskine said.

For her part, Erskine said: ‘There’s really no way to assume that a juror is thinking one way or another, and in particular by any facial expressions or anything else that you can see. 

‘I never ascribe to the believe that anybody can read what a juror is thinking based on watching them, taking notes or changing their facial expressions.’

‘As a judge, my job was to oversee the trial and make sure that it proceeded fairly and that the rights of the defendants were protected. But beyond that, my philosophy has always been that it’s up to 12 people to make that decision.’

British pair Amy Hunt and Georgia Hunter Bell had to settle for fifth and third respectively in strong fields at Thursday’s Diamond League meeting in Zurich.

Hunt, who won four gold medals at the European Championships earlier this month, clocked 11.04 seconds in a 100 metres won by Olympic champion Julien Alfred in 10.70sec.

Hunter Bell could not match Audrey Werro, who lowered her personal best to win the women’s 800m in one minute 53.70sec, just 0.42 seconds short of the world record.

Two other world records were broken on an eventful evening. Brazil’s Alison dos Santos set a new best of 45.80 in the men’s 400m hurdles and American Masai Russell lowered the women’s 100m hurdles to 12.09.

Hunt faced a formidable test as she looked to take her continental dominance onto the world stage.

Alfred, unbeaten over the distance in almost two years, was highly impressive as she pushed world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden into second place. American Sha’Carri Richardson was third with Hunt finishing behind Jamaica’s Tina Clayton.

“I was coming in here and not thinking too much about the time,” Hunt told the BBC. “To come fifth in that line-up – I think I had the slowest season’s best coming in and obviously very, very tired legs – I’m really happy with that.”

Despite the absence of Keely Hodgkinson, the women’s 800m boasted a world-class field and home favourite Werro powered to victory ahead of Femke Broeders-Bol. Hunter Bell ran a season’s best of 1:55.03.

Dos Santos smashed Karsten Warholm’s previous world record of 45.94 and beat the Norwegian in the process. Russell’s time eclipsed the 12.12 run by Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan in 2012.

Mondo Duplantis missed out on another world record in the men’s pole vault as both he and Greek rival Emmanouil Karalis went agonisingly close to clearing 6.32m.

That would have beaten Duplantis’ previous best by a single centimetre but the Swede still triumphed with a vault of 6.25m. Karalis settled for second and a personal best 6.20m.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.

The move comes after trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed late last week, and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on $20bn (C$28bn) worth of Canadian goods. Canada will implement “dollar for dollar” counter tariffs next month.

Trump has repeatedly posted threats about renaming the lake, one of the five Great Lakes that straddle both countries, on social media amid the trade dispute.

He said on Thursday the move was “official, effective immediately” and that his administration has “filed all the necessary papers, documents” to make the change.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted the name Lake Ontario can be traced back more than 400 years, adding in a social media post on Thursday that preceded the formation of the Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.

“We know that the United States is changing. Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he wrote. “Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever.”

When Trump took the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order that changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the name change, arguing a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water.

It also led to a legal dispute between Mexico and tech giant Google, which renamed the gulf in its maps application. , external

In that case, Google Maps users in the US see “Gulf of America”, while those in Mexico see the “Gulf of Mexico”. Those in other countries see the “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.

The White House at the time also blocked Associated Press reporters from presidential events over the news agency’s refusal to adopt the name “Gulf of America” in its coverage. The AP sued the Trump administration in response, and that legal battle is ongoing.

A deep partial lunar eclipse will take place during the night, with the Moon expected to pass through Earth’s shadow and turn shades of red as the event reaches its most dramatic stage

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Stargazers across the UK are being offered the chance to witness a spectacular Blood Moon in the early hours of Friday, although cloudy weather could spoil the view for many.

A deep partial lunar eclipse will take place during the night, with the Moon expected to pass through Earth’s shadow and turn shades of red as the event reaches its most dramatic stage.

At its peak, around 93% of the Moon will be covered by the darkest part of Earth’s shadow.

The rare-looking sight will occur as the Sun, Earth and Moon align, allowing the Earth to block much of the sunlight normally reflected by the lunar surface.

But anyone hoping to see it will need more than an alarm clock and a good view, with cloud forecast across several parts of the UK.

When will the eclipse reach its peak?

The lunar eclipse begins at 2.23am on Friday when the Moon enters the penumbra, the lighter outer section of Earth’s shadow.

The partial eclipse will begin at 3.33am as the Moon starts moving into the darker central shadow, known as the umbra.

The event is expected to reach its peak at 5.12am.

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At that point, around 93% of the Moon will be covered by the umbra, potentially creating the dramatic reddish appearance associated with a Blood Moon.

The partial eclipse will continue until around 6.51am.

However, not everyone will be able to watch until the end of the event because the Moon will set before the eclipse is over in some locations.

London is expected to lose sight of the Moon at around 6.15am.

Where will skies be clearest?

The Met Office has warned that viewing conditions will be difficult in many areas.

Cloud is forecast across Cornwall and Devon, Wales, the Midlands, parts of north-west England, most of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

There could also be patchy cloud across north-east England.

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Southern and eastern England are expected to have the best chance of seeing at least part of the eclipse, especially before cloud becomes more extensive later in the night.

A Met Office spokesperson said: “The greatest chance of seeing something is likely to be across southern and eastern England during its earlier stages, before cloud becomes more extensive.

“Elsewhere, any temporary breaks in the cloud could still provide brief views.”

Anyone hoping to maximise their chances should find a high vantage point with a clear and unobstructed view towards the south-western horizon.

Why can everyone see a lunar eclipse at once?

A lunar eclipse differs from a solar eclipse because it is not limited to a narrow path across the Earth’s surface.

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon blocks the Sun from the perspective of people in particular locations.

A lunar eclipse, on the other hand, occurs when the Moon enters Earth’s shadow.

That means everyone located on the night side of the planet can potentially see the event at the same time, provided the Moon is above the horizon and the skies are clear.

The eclipse will therefore take place simultaneously across the UK, even though the Moon’s exact position in the sky will vary from place to place.

What causes the Blood Moon effect?

The Moon does not completely disappear when it passes into Earth’s shadow.

Instead, some sunlight travels through the Earth’s atmosphere before being bent towards the lunar surface.

The atmosphere filters the light, scattering much of the shorter blue light while allowing redder wavelengths to reach the Moon.

This can give the Moon its famous reddish, orange or copper appearance.

The eclipse is safe to watch without any specialist equipment or protective glasses, unlike a solar eclipse.

All people need is a clear view of the sky and, ideally, an unobstructed view towards the south-west.

The Carabao Cup second round concludes tonight as Chelsea host Luton at Stamford Bridge, with the winners set to face Leeds. The Blues meet League One opposition as they look to build some quick momentum under Xabi Alonso, whose reign began with a 3-2 west London derby win over Fulham on Monday. The attacking trio of Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers and Joao Pedro were electric in that opener, though Chelsea were haunted by familiar problems in defence and in goal as they kicked off another new era.

By JOE HUTCHISON, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

Published: 17:46 BST, 27 August 2026 | Updated: 21:49 BST, 27 August 2026

Police in Minneapolis reportedly raided the apartment of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar‘s son and seized firearms before arresting his roommate.

Law enforcement sources told Alpha News that a search warrant was carried out at the home of Omar’s son Adnan on Tuesday night. 

According to the outlet, they recovered guns and ammunition from the home and arrested his roommate Abdulrahman Abdi, 22.

Earlier that day, the city’s police department said in a statement to the Daily Mail that they conducted a traffic stop and cited Abdi for no proof of insurance and no license. 

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The department said that Abdi was released at the scene and the vehicle was in the process of being impounded when a firearm was found inside. 

Officers later tracked Abdi to an address on Marquette Ave where they said they arrested him ‘without incident.’

Abdi was later booked into Hennepin County Jail on a weapons charge before being released on Wednesday night, records show.

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Abdulrahman Abdi, 22, was arrested ‘without incident’, police said in a statement to the Daily Mail

Ilhan Omar, left, is seen here with her son Adnan. His apartment was raided by police officers on Tuesday night, sources told Alpha News 

According to court records seen by the Daily Mail, Abdi has been convicted ten times in the past, most of the incidents have been misdemeanors. 

Last year he was found to have been speeding and driving despite having his license revoked for a previous offense. 

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In 2024 he was convicted of a felony after officers reported him traveling at 108 miles per hour in St. Paul.

A statement of probable cause said he was behind the wheel of a Jeep Grand Cherokee and was speeding alongside a Dodge Durango. 

He pleaded guilty to fleeing a police officer in a motor vehicle and was sentenced to one day inside Dakota County Jail. 

According to a sentencing order, he was also placed on supervised probation for two years. 

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Other convictions date back to 2022 and involve incidents of him using a cell phone while driving, excessive speeding and failing to show proof of insurance. 

Omar speaks during a campaign event for Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, in Minneapolis earlier this month

Ahmed Hirsi, left, the ex-husband of Ilhan Omar is pictured with his son Adnan in 2023

It comes after Omar revealed last year that her son was stopped by federal immigration agents who questioned his citizenship. 

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Omar said that her son was pulled over after stopping at a Target store, he was only released after he showed them his US passport. 

She told WCCO: ‘Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [ICE] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go.’ 

She also claimed ICE agents previously entered a mosque where her son and others were praying before leaving without making arrests.