Oscar winner Brenda Fricker has died at the age of 88.

The character actor was most well-known to film fans for her work in the 1989 movie My Left Foot, for which she made history as the first Irish woman to ever win an Oscar, picking up the Best Supporting Actress prize at the Academy Awards.

Her other movie credits include So I Married An Axe Murderer and Veronica Guerin, while to a generation of viewers, she’ll be best remembered as the character known as the “Central Park Pigeon Woman” in the festive family comedy Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

Paying tribute in a statement to BBC News on Friday morning, her agent said: “We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her.

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“I was honoured to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”

20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Brenda’s other on-screen work included a recurring role in Casualty as nurse Megan Roach, a role she continued to play until the 2010s.

She also shared the screen with Glenn Close in 2011’s Albert Nobbs, and appeared in the TV adaptation of the Graham Norton novel Holding in the 2020s.

In addition to her acting career, Brenda released her candid memoir She Died Young: A Life In Fragments, last year.

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Following the news of Brenda’s death, Ireland’s Tánaiste Simon Harris said he had been “deeply saddened” by the loss, remembering the late actor as “a national treasure”.

“She was a consummate performer who graced our screens and stages with remarkable talent and authenticity. Brenda brought depth and humanity to every role she undertook,” he said.

Harris added: “She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage. Quite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again.”

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The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has just bombed a funeral in the Nuseirat camp in Gaza.

At least eight people were slaughtered and more than 20 others wounded, though at the time of Mosab Abu Toha’s post, the known death toll was five.

IOF use the Nuseirat camp as a slaughter camp

The Nuseirat refugee camp has repeatedly been the scene of Israeli atrocities. These include the murder of 276 civilians and the wounding of almost 700 during Israel’s US-assisted ‘rescue mission’ in 2024. Four ‘hostages’ were rescued, including Noa Argamani.

Argamani later said she had been in far more danger from Israel than her captors and indeed had been wounded by Israeli bombing.

Featured image via WAFA News Agency

By Skwawkbox

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A retired Church of England vicar and three Christian climate activists have been convicted of aggravated trespass. This is after they dropped a huge banner saying “Don’t Crucify Creation” from the tower of Bath Abbey. They’ve accused church officials of prioritising tourism over planetary breakdown and billions of deaths.

They were part of a national day of action on September 13, 2025, by Christian Climate Action (CCA). The group called on the Church of England to speak out more clearly and persistently about the Climate and Nature Emergency and the existential threat to people and all life on Earth.

The activists are:

• Rev Bill White, 71, a retired vicar from Macclesfield, Cheshire.
• Emma Ireland, 41, a mental health worker from Bristol.
• Stephen Pritchard, 66, a former parish councillor from Radstock, Somerset.
• Kate Chesterman, 60, a retired university worker from Hythe, Kent.

They said they acted out of necessity as experts predict two billion deaths due to climate change by 2050.

The four occupied the tower for the launch of CCA’s Stop Crucifying Creation vision booklet. It urges the Church to speak out, take radical nonviolent action like Jesus, cease harming the planet, and support people through the realities of climate breakdown.

The group hung a huge banner from the top, sat down and asked to speak to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Michael Beasley, to seek his support for the campaign.

But Bath Abbey officials called police who threatened to carry the activists down a narrow spiral staircase to evict them. The four walked down the steps to prevent injury to either the police, or themselves.

They were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass and obstruction. Bath Abbey tour guide Beth Carter said the action disrupted public tower tours for the rest of the day.

Christian supporters at court

Scores of supporters were outside court and in the public gallery during the two-day trial at Bristol Magistrates on 16-17 July.

After the verdict, three members of CCA, James Grote, Deborah Wilde and Sue Hampton, stood and unfurled a ‘Don’t Crucify Creation’ banner in the public gallery. The judge left but Hampton spoke in prayer, saying:

Justice is love in action and that’s what these four people have shown.

The three protesters were not detained but allowed to leave court with the banner.

A report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and climate scientists from the University of Exeter, Planetary Solvency: Finding Our Balance with Nature, predicts more than two billion people will die as a result of global trajectories of 2°C of global warming by 2050.

The defendants said the response from church leaders in calling the police showed they cared more about making money from tower tours than the impending deaths of billions due to climate breakdown.

Chesterman told the court:

If the best the church can do is prioritise tourism over its own followers attempting to bring the seriousness of the situation to their attention, then there’s something wrong with their religion.

Stephen Pritchard said:

If Jesus were alive today he would turn over the tables in the gift shop at Bath Abbey and be charged with aggravated trespass.

Chesterman, giving her defence, said:

The church has the sacred obligation to sound the alarm and they are absolutely not doing that. That’s why we went up the tower – because we couldn’t get the church to listen.

We didn’t just do this out of the blue. We did this after many, many attempts to engage with the Church, and churches up and down the country.

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What would the effect be if the church made more actions on climate change? With the resources the church has available, the influence it has, it could affect large numbers of people – and changing public opinion is key to influencing Government policy.

It could rewild a third of its land, which it has been asked to do. It has a platform where it could speak and speak and speak again. It could highlight the plight of the dying people all around the world, so people here would take it [the Climate Emergency] more seriously.

District judge Nicholas Wattam did not accept their defence of necessity. He fined each of the defendants £200 and ordered them to pay £700 in court costs and victim surcharge.

Outside court, White said:

Early in 2025, a reliable source concluded that between one billion and four billion people will die as a direct result of climate change – the actual numbers depending on what we do and how quickly we do it.

The Church of England has a five-fold mission to tell, teach, tend, transform and treasure. How can we claim to tend to the needs of the disadvantaged if we’re silent about the Climate Emergency?

How can we claim to transform unjust structures if we don’t use our position to speak the truth about the multi-national fossil fuel companies, and about their supporting financial institutions?

During CCA’s day of action, similar protests took place at Canterbury, York, Winchester, Westminster Abbey, Durham and Southwark cathedrals. But there were no other arrests and protesters were welcome at Canterbury and able to speak at a service in Winchester.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have just published a new teaching document, Hope for All Creation: A theological response to the environmental crisis, which presents action on climate change as a key part of Christianity. The Archbishops say:

To be prophetic in speech and action on these issues — locally, nationally, and globally — is to live out this faith and hope. It is an essential part of following Jesus and sharing the Gospel today.

You can find Christian Climate Action’s vision document Stop Crucifying Creation here.

Featured image via Christian Climate Action

By The Canary

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Matt Damon has claimed that Ben Affleck’s reaction to his performance in The Odyssey came in the form of a phone call he’d been waiting decades for.

The two actors are close friends as well as frequent collaborators, having co-written the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting, as well as sharing the screen in the likes of Dogma, Air and The Rip.

During a new interview with MTV UK to promote The Odyssey, Matt opened up about his friendship with Ben, recalling how they’d been through “a whole hell of a lot together”.

“He’s one of the great loves of my life, I will say about Ben,” he enthused.

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Matt then shared that after Ben watched The Odyssey for the first time, he “got a phone call from him that I think I’ve been waiting 45 years to get”.

“He didn’t stop talking for an hour,” the Bourne Identity star said. “It was like he’d seen the movie 20 times. He got absolutely everything, every detail, he somehow soaked it all in in one viewing.”

But Ben isn’t the only tough critic in Matt’s life who was won over by The Odyssey.

Matt revealed how his 20-year-old daughter Isabella (who refers to his film The Great Wall as just The Wall, claiming there’s “nothing great about that movie”) had called him after watching the Christopher Nolan epic just to tell him how “proud” she was of her dad.

Watch the full interview below:

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He has also spoken candidly about the gruelling shoot, which took the cast and crew to a series of locations around the globe over a three-month period of filming.

“The joke on the crew was we didn’t have a single easy location,” Matt recalled to GQ earlier this year.

“Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer.’ ”

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The Odyssey is in cinemas now.

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For the last two years, the international criminal court (ICC) has been struggling to navigate serious allegations levelled at its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. Two women, who previously worked with Khan in varying capacities, came forward in 2024 with claims of sexual abuse, harassment, and coercion. He denies all allegations.

Khan was suspended whilst the ICC undertook two investigations. Both have since concluded, albeit with differing outcomes. The first found that the women’s claims had merit; the second found that the evidence was insufficient. Now, the two women have spoken publicly about their experiences, as well as addressing counter-claims that they are “state agents” looking only to discredit Khan.

It is undoubtedly a complex situation. But as various forms of power joust to maintain their crumbling legitimacy, it is the most vulnerable who continuously become fodder for inane debates where accountability is sacrificed to maintain a semblance of order. What we are confronted by, at every turn, is layer upon layer of hypocrisy.

ICC prosecutor Khan’s warrants

On the whole, reporting on the women’s allegations has been depressingly muddled. Given that the women came forward shortly after Khan applied for arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, many have questioned the timing of the investigations against him.

It is clear that the situation has broader implications. However, amidst all of the uncertainty one uncomfortable possibility is persistently ignored: numerous things can be true at once. The question, however, is how do we navigate these truths in order to hold the powerful to account, irrespective of who they might be trying to hold to account elsewhere?

Consider the fact that Khan did not only issue arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. In fact, these warrants were secondary to those issued for three Hamas leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh. If this fact has since been elided, it is because Israel murdered all three in the course of its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip. What should have been a matter for the ICC was instead dealt with by Israeli vigilantism.

ICC handling under question

Whilst many on the left have entertained the possibility that the allegations are opportunistic, it is also entirely plausible that they followed Khan’s announcement because there was another clear hypocrisy on display. What sort of faith should anyone have an institution tasked with holding states to account for allegations of criminality if it cannot keep its own house in order?

The Trump administration only added to the chaos by announcing it would ‘disable’ the ICC and place international sanctions on Khan. In so doing, they did not mention the allegations against him, although some speculated their timing was opportunistic as well. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Professor William Schabas, of Middlesex University London, said:

Maybe they’re just feeling they’ll kick it some more, and that’ll do a death blow to it.

Trump, of course, is in no position to condemn another man for sexual abuse. Just this week, E. Jean Carroll collected over $5.6 million in damages following a civil case she brought against Trump for sexual abuse. But Trump has never let hypocrisy stop him before.

There are countless other examples of hypocrisy that we could point to. But to map out every instance of hypocrisy clouding international politics today always results in the same outcome: a regrettable ‘whataboutery’ that sidelines victims of abuse as men jostle to maintain their powerful appearances. Or, indeed, as other men jostle to debate state power whilst trampling over the experiences of women.

Wider issues

The allegations against Khan thus highlight an even more uncomfortable truth. While the left rightly disavows the ‘Epstein class’ for its skirting of accountability, this only risks deflecting from a much broader and more complex issue: abuse of power and position is not a problem exclusive to the political right. Instead, it is a problem of patriarchy overall. The title of a 1953 novel by Flannery O’Connor proves perennial: a good man is hard to find.

The degeneration of sexual abuse allegations into supposedly unprovable ‘he said, she said’ gossip makes a mockery of all processes of accountability we might hope to rely on. Such a degeneration also represents the sharpest end of a problem that affects contemporary politics as a whole. These allegations are notoriously difficult to prove in a court of law, but what isn’t difficult to prove right now?

Israel has undoubtedly perpetrated a genocide. And, multiple forms of state power – governments, monitoring bodies, the media – have all colluded to deny that genocide. And, Khan has been central in whatever piecemeal attempts exist to hold Israel to account for its atrocities.

But, his attempted prosecution of genocidal actors does not preclude him from committing abuse. We must be able to hold multiple potentially uncomfortable scenarios at once. To fail to do so is to fail to hold power to account.

Erosion of trust widespread

There are grey areas here; there is complexity. But that complexity needn’t be seen as a smokescreen. With regards to allegations of sexual abuse specifically, there is an understanding that even the appearance of misconduct warrants investigation and accountability.

That someone’s actions might even be mistaken for misconduct is enough on its own to suggest that the person or persons concerned have acted improperly. This baseline is essential because it is one way in which we might avoid an exploitation of any ‘plausible deniability’ to maintain a status quo that is more generically unjust. Whether any misconduct is proven or not, it is clear that practices must change so that not even the appearance of misconduct is tolerated.

In the course of our day-to-day lives, we will recognise that this is now the standard position of HR departments in various sectors. But more must be done to ensure that similar processes can take place on a much grander scale. In our age of rampant misinformation, trust is at an all-time low – trust in politics, in justice, and in our institutions. Whether the women’s allegations are eventually proven or not becomes irrelevant. Processes of accountability have already failed. They are failing everywhere.

Featured image via the Canary

By Em Colquhoun

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Though they’re usually nothing to worry about, small details – like changes to your fingernails and little yellow bumps around your eyes – can sometimes point to more serious conditions.

And according to Dr Jiri Kubes, a radiation oncologist at the Proton Therapy Centre, a lesser-known symptom of lung cancer can sometimes show up on your hands rather than your chest.

“Finger clubbing” can be linked to “many serious, long-term conditions,” the NHS agreed – lung cancer among them.

In fact, the symptom appears in 35% of people with non-small cell lung cancer and 4% of people with small cell lung cancer.

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What is finger clubbing?

It’s a condition in which a person’s fingertips become larger and more curved over time.

Dmytro Bosnak via Getty Images

Finger clubbing is also called “digital clubbing” or “Hippocratic nails”. And because it can happen really gradually, Dr Kubes said “it can be difficult to notice the difference early on.

“It typically progresses in stages, meaning knowing how to spot initial signs is crucial in potentially securing an early diagnosis.”

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One of the first early indicators is softening of the nail bed, accompanied by redness around the skin of the nail.

This can develop into a steeper curve and eventually means patients’ fingertips take on a clubbed, enlarged appearance.

In the early stages, you might also want to look out for the “Lovibond angle” – the small dent at the bottom of your nail that you can see from the side.

Per the Cleveland Clinic, “In the early stages of nail clubbing, your nail and nail bed look flat from the side”.

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Amy Glover / HuffPost UK / Getty

The Schamroth window test, which is related, involves putting the nails of different hands together back-to-back to see if there’s a diamond-shaped space between your cuticles.

If there isn’t one, you might have finger clubbing.

When should I see a doctor about finger clubbing?

“Any unexplained changes to the fingers should be taken seriously and assessed by a medical professional as soon as possible,” said Dr Kubes.

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“While finger clubbing does not always mean cancer, it is still linked to other lung, heart or inflammatory conditions, meaning any unexplained changes should be checked by a doctor. They can examine you and any other symptoms you have, as well as send you for tests if deemed necessary.”

Non-finger-clubbing signs of lung cancer include:

• a cough that doesn’t go away,
• coughing up blood,
• often being breathless,
• unexplained tiredness,
• unexplained weight loss,
• pain when breathing or coughing.

If you’re experiencing any of these signs, regardless of whether or not you’ve got signs of finger clubbing, speak to your GP.

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