Studying in London before taking up a high-flying job in New York, Naina Mishra seemed set for a bright future – until she began retreating from friends and family into a paranoid spiral even her mother couldn’t break. What does her story reveal about the dangers of young adult estrangement?
Naina Mishra seemed to turn up at the yoga studio in Euston, north-west London, out of nowhere. She wasn’t referred by anyone; she didn’t come with a friend. A 21-year-old woman of Indian heritage with an American accent who grew up in Hong Kong and had recently arrived in London, Naina just “fell in” off the street in January 2022, say her yoga teachers, Hamish Hendry and Louise Newton. But it became part of her daily life. Every morning, she returned to practise there.
Chatting after class, they learned that Naina had just graduated from university in the US and had been interning at the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the consulting firm McKinsey. She was studying in London before beginning a high-flying job as a business analyst at McKinsey in New York in the autumn. “She was really focused,” Newton remembers. “She would say, ‘My goals are to be a CEO, to have three children, to be married.’ She was really clear on what the future was going to hold for her.” By May 2022, she had left London to embark on her next chapter.
Continue reading...First lady is facing increased scrutiny as political experts suggest she is behind US president’s recent volte-faces on Gaza and Putin
When Melania Trump arrives in Britain for her husband’s second state visit next month, it will not just be the photographic pack straining every lens for clues as to her opaque mood or signs of froideur in their marriage. It will also be British officials.
Six months into his second term as US president, a period in which Donald Trump has pirouetted on just about every big international issue, mandarins in Whitehall have realised they need to focus less time on trying to tame him, and more on looking at his wife.
Continue reading...Alternating between fast and slow walking is particularly suited to people who do not do much regular exercise
If the thought of pumping iron or holding a plank doesn’t put a spring in your step, maybe the latest exercise trend to dominate social media will: Japanese interval walking.
The idea is simple: alternate between three minutes of fast and three minutes of slow walking, ideally for 30 minutes at a time.
Continue reading...Locarno film festival
Thompson turns up the accent dial to play a good-natured Minnesota widow bringing her charm – and her gun – to tackle some concentrated nastiness
From the freezing heart of Fargo country in snowy Minnesota comes a quite outrageously enjoyable suspense thriller starring Emma Thompson; I hadn’t realised what a treat it would be to see Thompson handle a pistol with a scope and also demonstrate where on the body you can get shot and still keep moving.
The Dead of Winter has an old-school barnstorming brashness, some edge-of-the-seat tension, a mile-wide streak of sentimentality, a dash of broad humour and a horrible flourish of the macabre. Brian Kirk directs from a script by screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb, and Thompson turns up the accent dial to play a neighbourly and good-natured Minnesota widow. With her recently deceased husband, she ran a fishing supplies store and like him was keen on ice-fishing: venturing out on huge freezing lakes, drilling a hole in the ice, setting up a phone-box sized ice shelter for warmth and lowering the bait and lure. Her late husband sweetly took her on an ice-fishing trip on a certain remote lake for their first date – bittersweet flashbacks bring home the memory – and it is to this lake that she comes on a mission to scatter his ashes.
Continue reading...Tom Kerridge, Yotam Ottolenghi, Rachel Roddy and others reveal how they get the barbie started (with not a charred burger in sight)
Depending on your temperament, having a Michelin-starred chef drop by with something to throw on your back-garden barbecue might be a dream come true, or a bit of a nightmare. Will they judge us for buying ready-made coleslaw? Will they notice how excessively charred the drumsticks are? But chefs are people too – and they like being invited over for a burger and a beer just as much as the rest of us. It’s just that their burgers might be made from dry-aged steak, minced by hand that morning, paired with a carefully chosen low-intervention wine.
Chefs also like thinking beyond burgers, sausages and all the other traditional barbecue favourites, which is why, when we asked 18 of the UK’s best chefs what they would take to a barbecue, they recommended everything from chilli-spiked watermelon salad and intensely flavoured Korean marinades to dry non-alcoholic aperitifs and beautiful tins of spiced salt. (And not a tub of coleslaw in sight.)
Continue reading...Air-to-air systems can warm homes in winter and cool them in summer – and they’re now set to join the low-carbon grant scheme
When David Tester, 56, installed a heat pump in his home in the winter of 2022, freezing temperatures descended on the country alongside a series of named storms. It was a world away from this summer’s heatwaves, which have pushed Britain to the brink of drought.
But Tester’s choice of heat pump design has meant that his three-bedroom 1930s semi in West Sussex has remained at a comfortable temperature despite Britain’s increasingly volatile weather. The air-to-air heat pump provides heating in the winter but acts like an air conditioner in the summer months.
Continue reading...Number of arrests was highest recorded in relation to single operation in at least past decade, according to Met police
More than 450 people have been arrested in central London at the largest demonstration relating to Palestine Action since the group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
On Saturday night, the Metropolitan police said: “Parliament Square and Whitehall are clear. As of 9pm, 466 people had been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Polluted water was released into loch near Glasgow because Royal Navy failed to maintain 1,500 water pipes, says watchdog
Radioactive water from the base that holds the UK’s nuclear bombs was allowed to leak into the sea after old pipes repeatedly burst, official files have revealed.
The radioactive material was released into Loch Long, a sea loch near Glasgow in western Scotland, because the Royal Navy failed to properly maintain a network of 1,500 water pipes on the base, a regulator found.
Continue reading...Footballer Suleiman al-Obeid was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Gaza last week, according to Palestine Football Association
Mohamed Salah has criticised Uefa for failing to state how a footballer known as the “Palestinian Pelé” died in a tribute it posted.
Suleiman al-Obeid, 41, was killed on Wednesday in southern Gaza when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, the Palestine Football Association (PFA) said.
Continue reading...Hundreds gather after alleged rape of girl for demonstration that also featured tense exchanges with anti-racism counter-protesters
Far-right protesters clashed with police on Saturday after hundreds of people gathered outside the town hall in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, for a planned protest.
The event was organised to protest over the alleged rape of 12-year-old girl in the town, for which two men, reportedly Afghan asylum seekers, have been charged.
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