This article contains spoilers for the Netflix film Office Romance.

This is perhaps reflected in some of the more adult humour showcased in Office Romance – and one graphic scene in particular.

Emmy nominee Betty Gilpin plays Sydney Bloom, Jennifer Lopez’s character’s right-hand woman, in the new Netflix comedy.

When we first meet Sydney, she’s already around nine months pregnant, and as the story progresses, she eventually gives birth right there in the office – with viewers getting to see pretty much all of it.

Suffice to say, this was achieved with the use of prosthetics, which she opened up about during a new interview with Variety.

“Honestly, I was pretty freaked out when I first saw the prosthetic vagina,” she recalled.

“I had a nervous breakdown and then I was like, ‘Oh, but I’ll be holding the ultimate working mom’s hand, Jennifer Lopez, so what could go wrong?’.”

Betty explained that there were more prosthetics used for the sequence than you might have realised, claiming: “My real legs were below a table, [I had] fake prosthetic legs, and then a puppeteer was standing at my real legs pushing an animatronic baby out of my prosthetic vagina.”

“It was insane,” she remarked.

Betty went on to share that the scene was originally even more detailed than what made it into the finished film.

She added: “The saddest part was when the scene was over and everybody but the puppeteers stayed in the room because the only way to reset was to go under and pull the fake placenta — I think the placenta is not in the movie anymore – but reach up through the prosthetic vagina that I am still zipped into, pull the placenta back and take the umbilical cord and pull it back and then pull the baby back through, and then it was time to do it again.”

Office Romance stars Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein as the CEO of an airline and the head of its legal department, who fall in love despite the company’s strict rules about workplace relationships.

While critically it hasn’t exactly gone down a storm (it currently holds a 51% score on Rotten Tomatoes while on Letterboxd, users have ranked it 2.6 stars), it has clearly gone down well with Netflix users, as it’s the platform’s number one film at the time of writing.

Many Rivals fans were perturbed after last week’s episode when they realised the show was due to take a mid-season break.

Following the mammoth success of its inaugural outing in 2024, Rivals’ second season was boosted from just eight episodes to 12 – albeit with a break in the middle.

Over the weekend, it was revealed that fans have a bit of a wait on their hands for the next run of episodes, with the latter half of the season due to air weekly on Disney+ starting in November.

The news was accompanied by a new teaser for the next part of season two, which you can check out for yourself below:

An official Disney+ synopsis for the rest of season two teases: “As Tony Baddingham and Declan O’Hara’s contest for the Cotswolds crown hits a fever pitch, Rupert Campbell-Black is forced to confront his own personal demons. Across hedonistic parties, Bonfire Night chaos, the Hampshire Hunt Ball and a turbulent Christmas, affairs unravel, alliances fracture and rivalries intensify.

“Caught in the middle of the frenzied franchise battle, Taggie O’Hara must find the courage to follow her heart while everyone else faces the consequences of ambition, power and secrets that they can no longer hide.”

Rachael Stirling will also be joining the cast as Lady Monica Baddingham’s younger sister Araminta Pemberton, with Rupert Evans and Big Little Lies’ Santiago Cabrera also playing new characters in the new episodes.

Rivals writer Laura Wade previously claimed that the cliffhanger at the end of season six was partly responsible for the mid-season pause in an effort “for those bits of story to just have a moment to sink in with viewers” and “build up some anticipation”.

“Also, we’ve got the Fifa World Cup coming up, so we’re releasing the first half before the football,” she pointed out on a more practical level.

“Get that out of the way, and then release the second half.”

Before the release date confirmed, she teased to TechRadar that the story would pick up in the autumn, noting: “On screen, [season two] runs into Christmas, which allows us to sort of parcel it out for everybody to savour the story.”

Sarah Smith, the corporation’s North America editor, has “once again been defied” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes on targets in central and western Iran early on Monday morning.

That came after Tehran launched missiles on northern Israel on Sunday.

On Radio 4′s Today programme, Smith pointed out that Israel had already angered the White House by bombing Lebanon in recent days, despite Trump’s claims that a peace deal to end the Iran war is close.

“And then, after Iran fires some missiles at Israel, he was very clear with the Israeli prime minister not to retaliate because he was worried that that could derail the peace negotiations that are going on,” she said.

“He made it clear that the Iranian missiles hadn’t done any damage, and therefore there was no need for any retaliation. And yet, very soon after that we saw that Israel did take action.

“We haven’t heard from Donald Trump since then, but he will be furious. He was very, very clear with Benjamin Netanyahu not to do this, and once again he has been defied.

“It was almost exactly a year ago that Donald Trump was answering reporters’ questions in front of TV cameras and dropped the f-bomb, surprisingly, because he was so angry with Netanyahu for firing missiles at Iran in breach of a ceasefire agreement.

“And now he says that we’re very close to a US-Iran agreement, and will be furious that he thinks that is being imperilled by Israel’s actions.”

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We’ve been talking about sex around my house a lot lately.

As my 10-year-old gets ready to enter middle school next year, he’s been getting increasingly curious about bodies, puberty, and of course, s-e-x.

He’s not interested in having sex, he’s quick to inform me – in fact, the first time I explained the physical machinations of intercourse, his initial response was, “I don’t know, I’d rather play video games.”

But he is interested in understanding sex, a circumstance that has led to a series of increasingly difficult-to-answer queries along the lines of “But what does semen look like?”.

We’ve looked at a diagram of the inside of a penis together. We found out that the hole on the tip of the penis is called the “urinary meatus”. I finally convinced him that a man doesn’t pee inside a woman to make a baby. It’s been a wild time.

I try to answer his questions as honestly as is age-appropriate while using the clinical and appropriate terms for body parts and sex acts. Sometimes, I get a little stumped or tongue-tied by questions I didn’t anticipate, like when he asked me how old you have to be to have sex. (I came up with: “There’s no set age, but you want to make sure you’re emotionally mature enough to handle it, that you’ve found someone you trust enough to take that step with, and that you have the necessary information to do it safely. Also, sex should never happen between children and adults.”)

While it’s not always easy or comfortable to have these conversations, I love that my preteen feels comfortable with himself and unashamed to approach me with any and all questions about sex and sexuality. (Although I did have to tell him recently that it’s not necessary to inform me every time he has an erection.)

I have also, throughout his life, been careful not to assume my son’s sexuality; if we talk about the idea of a future partner, I refer to a potential “boyfriend or girlfriend,” “husband or wife.” He has queer people in his life, and he knows other kids with gay parents. He knows about trans and nonbinary people, and he once told me a great joke that went: “What are a chocolate bar’s pronouns? Her/she.” The time he came home from school repeating what some boy had told him – “Boys can’t kiss each other” – I didn’t hesitate to tell him that, my dear, they can and they DO.

I am very much a parent who says gay, because my son’s sexual orientation (and potentially, gender identity) has yet to be revealed to me, and it’s imperative to me that he knows I will love and support him no matter who he turns out to be attracted to.

So, the other night, when he asked me if two men can have sex together, I had no problem telling him enthusiastically: “Of course they can!” It’s when he asked me HOW they do it that things got hairy.

Tripping over my words, I gracelessly gave him the main idea. (Clinically, and not in excessive detail, but he got the gist.)

Then I immediately started to second-guess my decision. I should have said something nebulous like, “People have different ways to kiss and touch each other,” I thought to myself, feeling the itchy discomfort I get when I overshare with another mum at soccer practice.

So later, when he thought to ask me how two women do it, I sort of pawned him off with a nonanswer and sent him to bed. (But not before he asked me if I had ever done it, to which I responded with a swift and only slightly panicked “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,” which I stand by.)

The next day, I was still thinking about our conversation and sitting with the vague feeling that I hadn’t handled it correctly.

In light of the “Parental Rights in Education” law passed in Florida, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in the popular lexicon, there’s been a lot of talk about how supporters are assuming that discussion about the existence of sexual orientation or gender identity and related topics is somehow sexual in nature, and thereby inappropriate for children. That is wrong.

Knowing that some families have two mommies or two daddies is not sexual information. Small children don’t sexualise things in that way, and there’s nothing inherently deviant or inappropriate about knowing that LGBTQ+ people exist.

But what about when children are old enough to be taught about sex? (And experts do agree that these conversations are perfectly appropriate for children between 9 and 12, or even younger, especially considering they are on the cusp of puberty.)

If my son is old enough to have gotten a frank explanation of the mechanics of hetero sex, why did I feel so uncomfortable giving him the same information about queer sex? Especially considering that the sex acts engaged in by queer people are also performed by straight folks.

Somehow, when he asked me about two men together, the same information had just felt instinctually more, well, sexual.

I had to look at that discomfort. How had someone as well-intentioned and liberal and frankly not even entirely straight as me fallen into the idea that gay sex is somehow dirtier or less appropriate to talk about than straight sex?

And I don’t think I’m alone. When I started trying to research the topic, I found a lot of information on how to explain the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity to children, but practically nothing about actually talking to them about queer sex, at any age.

And what if my son does turn out to be gay? Wouldn’t my ability to provide LGBTQ-inclusive sex education then be of dire importance? Don’t I want my son to be sexually prepared, informed, and provided with the information he needs to stay safe, no matter what his sexual orientation? Who would tell him about things like safety in anal play and dental dams?

Not necessarily the teachers at his school. According to the GLSEN 2019 National School Climate Survey, only 8.2% of students (including those who received no sexual education at school) “received LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, which included positive representations of both LGB and transgender and nonbinary identities and topics.”

As a high school junior who identifies as a lesbian told The Atlantic in a 2017 article on LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, “We were informed on the types of protection for heterosexual couples, but never the protection options for gay/lesbian couples.”

Despite my attempts to resist assuming my son’s heterosexuality, when I half-answered his questions about gay sex, wasn’t I assuming it was information he didn’t need? If I was truly considering the possibility that my son might not be straight, wouldn’t I have answered him differently? Pretty sneaky, heteronormativity.

The more I Googled and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I’d gotten it wrong. Luckily, this is no uncommon experience for a parent. I make mistakes all the time, and when I do, I think there’s great value in modelling my ability to admit it, take responsibility, and apologise.

So last night, around bedtime, when all the most important conversations seem to happen, I went back in.

“Last night, you asked me some questions about how two men and two women have sex together,” I told him, “and I think I felt a little bit uncomfortable, or nervous, and I didn’t really answer what you asked. But I thought about it more and I realised that if you’re old enough to know how straight people have sex, there’s no reason you’re not old enough to know how gay people have sex.

“So we can talk about the different ways that gay people have sex together, which, by the way, are also ways that straight people have sex together, and I will answer any questions you have.”

There was nothing dirty or inappropriate about the conversation we proceeded to have, and at the end, he just wanted to know which acts could result in pregnancy, which, hey – is really important information to have!

He even made me proud when he pivoted from a reaction of “Wow, that’s so weird” to “Actually, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I shouldn’t call it weird,” in less than three seconds with no prompting.

Maybe as importantly, I told him that I’d felt uncomfortable talking about all this because of a prejudice I had, and that everyone has prejudices, but we have to investigate them and try to move beyond them when they come up.

I hope that’s a lesson we all can take to heart because the core belief contributing to my discomfort around the topic of talking to my son about gay sex feels to me like it’s on the same continuum of the ideas fuelling Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” and copycat bills.

To be clear, I do not think that we should be educating young children about how anybody has sex. But just as gay people are not inherently inappropriate, and education about LGBTQ topics is not inherently sexual, providing education about gay sex to children who are old enough for sex education is not any dirtier than providing them with information about straight sex.

And in the case of LGBTQ kids, it just may be vital.

Emily McCombs is the deputy editor of HuffPost Personal. She writes and edits first-person essays on all topic areas including identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc.), love and relationships, sex, parenting and family, addiction and mental health, and body politics.

This piece was previously published on HuffPost and is being shared again as part of HuffPost Personal’s “Best Of” series.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defied Donald Trump to launch retaliatory air strikes on Iran.

The US president had claimed “I call the shots” just hours before the Israeli action.

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes on military targets in central and western Iran early on Monday morning.

Netanyahu’s decision is a major blow to Trump’s hopes of striking a peace deal with Iran to end the war which began on February 28.

Tehran launched missiles on northern Israel on Sunday, which Trump told Fox News was “certainly not going to help negotiations”.

The president said: “What I would suggest to Iran: You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough, get back to the table and make a deal.”

Trump also said he was “not happy” about strikes in recent days by Israel on Lebanon.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the president said Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to agree to any peace deal he strikes with Iran.

“I call all the shots – he doesn’t call the shots,” he said.

Nevertheless, it appears as though Netanyahu ignored Trump’s call for Israel not to strike Iran.

The Associated Press quoted a US official who said the president had “got [Netanyahu] to hold off for the time being”.

The US president told Israel’s Channel 12 news he did not want to see “an additional attack tonight”.

“The Iranian strikes didn’t hurt anybody,” Trump said. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.”

It is understood that Iran launched its own fresh strikes on Israel on Monday morning, threatening a further escalation in the latest Middle East conflict.

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There’s been growing concern for some time now over the popularity of manosphere content, particularly among young boys who might not necessarily question what they’re viewing.

The manosphere is “a collection of websites, social media accounts and forums dedicated to men’s issues, from health and fitness to dating and men’s rights”, says Robert Lawson, an expert in sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University.

Yet it’s increasingly become associated with anti-women and anti-feminist sentiments.

The impact of this kind of content is worrying – and parents and teachers are seeing it trickle down to school-age children. In fact, most primary and secondary school teachers are now “extremely concerned” about the influence of online misogyny on children and young people.

Parents fear it, too. New research from EE found over three-quarters (77%) admit they’re concerned about the influence of online content on their son’s attitude or behaviour. Two fifths (42%) said they’ve heard their sons use language or phrases they didn’t recognise, but believed may have come from negative online sources.

Not only can this kind of content impact the mental health of boys and men, according to UN Women, but it amplifies harmful sexist stereotypes, teaches dangerous social and dating behaviour, and makes both digital and real-life spaces more hostile for women and girls.

For parents, it can be hard to know how to tackle the issue – especially as much of the content promoting these harmful views is online and it’s hard to monitor teens’ internet use. Experts have also suggested the longer kids are spending online, the more likely they’re coming across misogynistic content.

EE’s survey, conducted in partnership with Professor Ben Hine, found over half (54%) of parents haven’t sought guidance for talking about the online content their son’s consume because they feel out of their depth, yet 80% would welcome more practical support and advice on having these conversations.

Just this week, the London Assembly published a guide suggesting that a ‘N.O.I.S.E. check’ might be a good place to start to help boys think critically about what they’re viewing online.

It’s a conversation tool parents can use to help teenagers “recognise patterns, reflect on how content makes them feel and build resilience to manipulative messaging”.

Parents are urged to look over content with their teen and then work through the following prompts.

N (negative): Ask them whether the content they’ve just watched leaves them feeling worse (ie. triggering strong negative emotions)? This could be anger or shame, or not feeling “good enough”. You could ask something like: “Do you think this creator wants viewers to feel upset or angry?”

O (opposition): Ask whether the content frames women as the enemy. You could say, “Does this encourage conflict between men and women?” or “Is it blaming women for complicated problems?”.

I (insecure): Talk to them about whether the content profits from insecurity – whether that’s around appearance, money, dating, status, confidence or masculinity. You could ask, “Does this make you feel like you’re not enough?” or “Who benefits if young men feel insecure?”.

S (simplistic): Talk about whether the content is offering a simple answer to a complex issue. The advice sheet urges boys to “be cautious of creators who claim: there is only one way to be a man, one group is causing all men’s problems, they alone have the answers, [or] success or happiness can be achieved through one simple formula”.

E (earning): Discuss who’s making money from their outrage? You can then talk about what the creator gains by keeping people watching, engaged and angry.

The aim of the tool, per the London Assembly, is not to tell boys what to think, but to “help them notice when someone else is trying to do their thinking for them”.

Parents have previously opened up about their sons being ‘red-pilled’ (influenced by misogynistic content) and have said teaching critical thinking was crucial to shifting the needle on these views.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about the fact that some paprika is made from a type of bell pepper called Capsicum annuum (more traditional kinds, however, usually contain Aleppo or various Hungarian varieties, among others).

That made me wonder about the rest of the spices, condiments, and pickles in my cupboard.

This includes the small, briny flavour bombs, capers – which, as it turns out, are actually baby flowers.

They’re made from the flower buds of the Mediterranean Capparis bush (yes, really).

The small, unbloomed flowers are picked by hand, which is why they can run a little dear. Then, they’re dried, salted and/or pickled.

These closed buds offer a nook-and-cranny-rich surface for salt to seep into, making the end product powerfully saline.

But that’s not the only transformation that takes place: when capers are brined, salted, or pickled, they release mustard oil (glucocapparin), leading to their “intense” flavour.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison added that “This enzymatic reaction leads to the formation of rutin, often seen as crystallised white spots on the surfaces of individual caper buds”.

Smaller capers are generally considered of higher quality. They can be more tender and less acidic than their bigger counterparts – some reccomend picking salt-packed, rather than pickled, capers if you can, as the salty flavour can be more concentrated.

French “nonpareille” types are some of the tiniest (about the size of a peppercorn), and are a bit of a cult foodie favourite.

Capers are graded by size. The options, from largest to smallest, include:

• Grusas,
• Fine,
• Capotes,
• Capucines,
• Surfines,
• Nonpareille.

These are the fruit of the same bush. They’re seed-filled berries that can also be pickled or salted.

They have a milder flavour than capers and are a lot bigger than the buds.

Caper leaves can also be pickled and eaten, and are sometimes used as a vegetarian alternative to rennet in cheese-making.

Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, experts at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Flight Operations Specialist Group explained that there are two reasons why we can’t recline our chairs during takeoff and landing.

“The first is that the seat gives the occupant maximum impact protection when upright, and its structure locks into position accordingly,” the spokesperson shared.

“Being upright also reduces the possibility of the occupant ‘submarining’ under their lap belt in the event of a violent deceleration.”

After all, the most dangerous parts of a plane’s flight are when it leaves and returns to the ground.

Fine – but how much of a difference can the mandatory opening of blinds make, especially when added lights are detrimental during the same phase?

According to aviation training services BAA Training, it’s actually done for similar reasons to those which lead staff to turn lights off during takeoff and landing.

Per pilot and YouTuber Captain Joe, the lights get dimmed to help our eyes adjust to the light outside, which means that our eyes will find it easier to adjust in the event of an emergency evacuation.

“If the cabin lights were to be fully bright, you would jump onto the slide into absolute darkness as your eyes struggle with the sudden change,” he said.

BAA Training stated that “If anything happens during a take-off or landing, your eyes will already be used to the day or night light outside, thus you will be able to react more quickly”.

Yes. It’s not just to do with light levels within the plane, but what the crew can see outside of it.

“If any problems occur with the engine or wings, the crew can see [them] out of those tiny round windows in a cabin.

“If the aircraft needs to be evacuated, passengers and the whole crew is able to see which side of the aircraft is safer for evacuation,” BAA Training added.

By the way, that’s what those little black triangles you can sometimes see above plane windows are for – they provide the most straightforward view of the wings for staff.

The seat these are placed above is sometimes known as the “Shatner seat”.

A BBC Question Time audience member savaged the Reform UK candidate in a crunch by-election over his “sexist” views.

Robert Kenyon has been forced to defend social media posts he made before being chosen to stand for the party in Makerfield, Greater Manchester.

The plumber wrote that women can’t “ref, drive or give directions” on an online rugby fan forum in the 2010s.

He said women presenting rugby games on TV “aren’t up to the job and only there to tick a box”, adding: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.”

On the same forum, he also said that women have abortions get them for “vanity purposes” and so they can “shag anyone they want”.

In a now-deleted social media post, he also interacted with a message sent on X to former Countdown host Carol Vorderman, which said: “Happy birthday Carol, my God I would love to smell and lick your arsehole.”

Kenyon replied: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking,” along with a thumbs up and a laughing emoji.

The Reform candidate, who is up against Labour’s Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and a former cabinet minister, has insisted he no longer holds the views he expressed before entering politics.

But in a special edition of Question Time broadcast on Thursday night from Makerfield, one woman in the audience said: “I’d rather have a career politician than a plumber who’s a sexist.”

Her comment was met with loud applause from other audience members.

Kenyon said he “won’t accept that label” and insisted a lot of his comments were made 15 years ago.

“I hold my hands up, I’ve made mistakes,” he said.

Kenyon added: “I was brought up by a single parent and my grandma, who was a widow, and an older sister. So I was brought up by women. I’ve got nothing but respect for women.

“I’ve made mistakes. I said things years ago that I wouldn’t say now and I definitely don’t believe that.”

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