All posts tagged: Malik

Liam Payne death latest: Zayn Malik postpones tour after ‘heartbreaking loss’

Liam Payne death latest: Zayn Malik postpones tour after ‘heartbreaking loss’

Published by skeptic

One Direction singer Liam Payne dies aged 31 Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free Liam Payne‘s father has “thanked” his son’s fans for their support over the singer’s sudden death, aged 31, after he fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires. Geoff Payne was seen reading tributes and kissing photos of his son outside the hotel where he died, one day before the singer’s sister said “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you” in a moving Instagram post. Payne’s former One Direction bandmates have said they are “devastated” over the singer’s death, while Cheryl, the mother of Payne’s 7-year-old son Bear, has opened up about her grief at an “indescribably painful time.” The singer, who shot to fame after joining the pop group on reality TV contest The X Factor in 2010 along with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, was described as …

The downfall of the Tories may be predictable, but it can still feel promising | Nesrine Malik

The downfall of the Tories may be predictable, but it can still feel promising | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

With the result by all measures a foregone conclusion, this general election campaign is less a contest and more a long coronation for one party, and an extended wake for the other. Keir Starmer is already being treated like the next prime minister rather than a leader of an opposition striving to unseat the incumbent. The Tories’ fate is only uncertain in terms of the degree of defeat: will it be serious diminishment or oblivion? In this interregnum, the future heaves into view. The upcoming political chapter already has clear contours. Labour’s tone and policy are set. There will be no rabbits out of the hat, no crowd-pleasers, no circus shenanigans. What there will be is the long view of the management consultant – sleeves rolled up, of course – who has identified inefficiencies in the struggling business and will need a few quarters for the dividends of their work to appear on the balance sheet. With Starmer’s rejection of “tax and spend” comes a deferral to a concept of growth that relies on a …

Don’t let the sound and fury over Gaza protests drown out what the students are saying | Nesrine Malik

Don’t let the sound and fury over Gaza protests drown out what the students are saying | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

On a hot day last week, the pavements outside Columbia University were heaving. About 200 protesters were gathered, making a noise that was bigger than their numbers, raising pro-Palestine chants and signs. It was a disparate crowd, diverse across ethnicities and generations. “I’ve lived in this neighbourhood all my life,” said one of them when I asked him why he was there. One smiling elderly lady walked through the crowd offering small bottles of water. A helicopter circled overhead. The police who encircled the crowd were jittery, yelling at passersby to keep moving, and raising the temperature of what was a loud but perfectly orderly and amiable crowd. Once inside the campus, I made my way to the reason for protesters, the police and the high security at the university gates: an encampment of students on a patch of lawn at the heart of campus. It had been up for about two weeks at this point, after a series of demands to university administrators, including divestment from “companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid”, …

Ravaged by austerity, chastened by Brexit: how can Britain have influence abroad when it’s broken at home? | Nesrine Malik

Ravaged by austerity, chastened by Brexit: how can Britain have influence abroad when it’s broken at home? | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

Deciding on what the UK’s place in the world should be has been like watching politicians spin a wheel. Then spinning it again when the option they landed on doesn’t work out. First, it was the imperial power projections of Brexit, the reassertion of Britain’s place in the world unshackled by the limitations of equal partnership with Europe. You don’t hear so much about this any more (funny that). Instead, we now find ourselves in an era chastened by the embarrassing bombast of the past few years, but still trying to work out where we “fit”, what our role is, in a world where the country’s status has taken a beating. Earlier this month, former diplomats proposed that the Foreign Office be abolished altogether and be replaced by a new Department for International Affairs. As it stands, the Foreign Office works like “a giant private office for the foreign secretary” and should be replaced by a new independent institution, one “less rooted in the past”. The new body they propose would be a more modern …

For a full year, the bodies have piled up in Sudan – and still the world looks away | Nesrine Malik

For a full year, the bodies have piled up in Sudan – and still the world looks away | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

One year ago today, Sudan descended into war. The toll so far is catastrophic. Thousands are dead, and millions are displaced, with hunger and disease ravaging all in the absence of aid. The UN has called the situation “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history”, afflicting about 25 million people. The Sudanese people are suffering what has become the largest displacement crisis in the world. The war was both sudden and a long time coming. The short history is that of a country where, following a promising 2019 revolution that overthrew the dictator Omar al-Bashir, the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful militia, ejected civilians from a power-sharing agreement between the three parties and then could not come to an agreement themselves. Their partnership broke down in April last year, and the RSF moved quickly, taking over the capital city, Khartoum, in an unprecedented moment in the country’s history. It then spread through the rest of the country, looting, assaulting and murdering civilians. The army – and here is the …

Conspiracy, monetisation and weirdness: this is why social media has become ungovernable | Nesrine Malik

Conspiracy, monetisation and weirdness: this is why social media has become ungovernable | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

On TikTok, there is a short clip of what an AI voiceover claims is a supposed “ring glitch” in the video in which Princess of Wales reveals her cancer diagnosis. It has 1.3 million views. Others, in which users “break down” aspects of the video and analyse the saga with spurious evidence, also rack up millions of views and shares. I have then seen them surface on X, formerly known as Twitter, and even shared on WhatsApp by friends and family, who see in these videos, presented as factual and delivered in reporter-style, nothing that indicates that this is wild internet bunkum. Something has changed about the way social media content is presented to us. It is both a huge and subtle shift. Until recently, types of content were segregated by platform. Instagram was for pictures and short reels, TikTok for longer videos, X for short written posts. Now Instagram reels post TikTok videos, which post Instagram reels, and all are posted on X. Often it feels like a closed loop, with the algorithm taking …

What a teacher in hiding can tell us about our failure to tackle intolerance | Kenan Malik

What a teacher in hiding can tell us about our failure to tackle intolerance | Kenan Malik

Published by skeptic

Three years ago, on 25 March 2021, a teacher from Batley Grammar School (BGS) in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding after a religious studies class he gave led to protests from Muslim parents and to death threats. Today, that incident has been largely forgotten. Except by the teacher. He can’t forget it because, extraordinarily, he and his family are still in hiding. Equally extraordinarily, little is said about this. The debate about the events at BGS, like many about Islam, blasphemy and offence, has been framed by two polarised arguments. Many on the reactionary right (and not just the reactionary right) view such confrontations as the unacceptable price of mass immigration and the inevitable product of a Muslim presence in western societies. Many liberals and radicals, on the other hand, think it morally wrong to cause offence, believing that for diverse societies to function, there is a need to self-censor so as not to disrespect different cultures and beliefs. Neither argument bears much scrutiny. The most comprehensive account of the events at BGS comes in a review published …

As brutal war rages and famine looms, look at pictures of Gaza and keep saying: ‘this is not normal’ | Nesrine Malik

As brutal war rages and famine looms, look at pictures of Gaza and keep saying: ‘this is not normal’ | Nesrine Malik

Published by skeptic

Cast your mind back to early 2022, more than two years ago now. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was such a shock, such a break with decades of political consensus, that it was treated as an act of aggression that could not for one moment be accepted or made peace with, only urgently rebuffed. Condemnations, lamentations and pledges of support, both for Ukraine’s military effort and its displaced people, all signified the same thing – this was an aberration that would not be allowed to pass. But pass it did. Russia has since suffered heavy losses and the war is referred to now as a “quagmire” for Putin, but pass it did. US arms support is dwindling, and a sizeable aid package has been stuck, blocked by partisan mischief, in the House of Representatives for months now. Just as striking is how the invasion has become relegated from high news and politics to another item jostling for attention, sympathy and outrage. An obscene banality of war is that if it goes on long enough, life …

Zayn Malik tell fans his new album is ‘raw and honest’

Zayn Malik tell fans his new album is ‘raw and honest’

Published by skeptic

Zayn Malik says his new album is “raw and honest”. The former One Direction singer, 31, is putting out his fourth studio record Room Under The Stairs on May 17 – his first since 2021’s Nobody Is Listening – and added it marks a departure from his old sound. He told the Hot Ones online show: “The new album is a very different sound to anything I’ve ever put out before. “It’s just really raw and honest and I hope people get that when they listen to it, I hope they get some insight into how I’m feeling and the things I’ve been going through over the last six or seven years while I’ve been writing this record, and that’s the most important thing for me, I just want people to feel that they get a connection with the record.” Malik has already released the artwork for Room Under The Stairs, which features a silhouette of his face and a blueprint of a house being built. He added about the title: “I recorded most of …

Zayn Malik shares details about life with his daughter Khai out of the limelight

Zayn Malik shares details about life with his daughter Khai out of the limelight

Published by Sam

Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Zayn Malik candidly spoke about his life with his daughter Khai outside of the limelight. On a 14 March episode of Hot Ones, the former One Direction member spoke about raising his three-year-old daughter with supermodel Gigi Hadid, and how they have tried to give her a peaceful childhood in rural Pennsylvania. Being away from the hustle and bustle of the entertainment business has directly influenced the writing process for his upcoming fourth studio album, Room Under The Stairs. “I think life in general can influence your writing process,” he explained to host Sean Evans. “You have to live and go through things to have something to talk about. So yeah, it’s definitely has took on the surrounding area of Pennsylvania. “It’s got that feel, it’s got the chill, like introspective kind of conscious kind of thing going on,” he continued. “And I’m …