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June 9, 2025

EastEnders’ Nicola Mitchell star slams ageism on TV

Newcomer Laura Doddington has proved quite a hit on Albert Square. Here, she talks nearly quitting acting before bagging her EastEnders role – and the struggle for ‘women of a certain age’

Laura thinks it’s ‘bonkers’ how older women must battle to be ‘seen’(Image: WireImage)

Laura Doddington has quickly become a soap favourite after her bombshell entrance as Nicola Mitchell in EastEnders just a couple of months ago. Since then, her character has been embroiled in a murder and now a long-ago affair has been uncovered, which has blown up into major drama.

With the makings of a true soap matriarch, it’s no surprise Laura, 44, found herself nominated for Best Newcomer at the British Soap Awards last month. But before bagging her dream role, the actress of 22 years, she tells OK!, considered changing careers, thinking her big break would never come.

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Laura, 44, has made quite a splash since joining Walford(Image: BBC/Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron)

“If I’m honest with you, the industry is hard at the moment,” says Laura, speaking to new prior to the awards ceremony. “Before this audition came through, I’d been looking at retraining to do something else. I’ve got a young kid – and that makes you think about their future and stability for them.

“I cut my son’s hair and I’m reasonably good at it, so I thought that might be an option. I was in Prime Suspect when I was in my twenties and The Midwich Cuckoos, but they weren’t massive parts. I was beginning to think it might not be possible to have that lead role.”

Cambridge-born Laura also had small roles in Doctors, Holby City and Casualty, as well as frequent theatre work, before getting the breakthrough she wanted so much. She landed the part of the latest feisty Mitchell woman, Nicola, nine months ago. “I’ve been a jobbing actor for 22 years and over that time you deal with really amazing highs, but also lows – missing out on jobs, not even getting seen for jobs,” Laura says.

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“So when I got the part, even though I’d been in it before for a fleeting moment, I was ecstatic. I’m really lucky that [former executive producer] Chris Clenshaw took a punt on a jobbing actor and gave me the chance. This came at the right time. It feels incredible.”

Laura says the audition process was an emotional rollercoaster and she feared she’d missed out on the chance of a lifetime.”“I didn’t hear anything for four weeks,” she recalls. “I thought it had gone to someone else. Unfortunately, in this industry, when you get to over the age of about 35 and you haven’t made a name for yourself, the interesting roles sort of start drying up.

Laura says Adam Woodyatt who plays Ian Beale has been her ‘mentor’ on the show(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Kieron McCarron)

“We stop being interested in women when they get over a certain age, which is bonkers, and that’s why I love soaps and continuing dramas as they champion individuals of all ages and put characters at the heart of storytelling.” Eventually the call came through to say that Laura had got the part. “When I found out, there were a lot of tears and a lot of expletives,” she says, laughing.

Laura admits she was full of nerves when she stepped out in Albert Square for her first scenes as Nicola. But she says Adam Woodyatt, who plays Ian Beale and was her mentor, was on hand to help. “He was on set on my first day in case I had any questions,” she says.

“It was his day off but he came in, bless him. Everyone on the show is so welcoming and kind. It was daunting doing scenes with soap legends as colleagues. Seeing Steve [McFadden], Letitia [Dean] – it was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ But they are amazing. And the boys – Roland, Elijah and Lewis – they were awesome. We gelled so quickly.”

The new Mitchells – Teddy (Roland Manookian) and his sons Harry (Elijah Holloway) and Barney (Lewis Bridgeman) – arrived in Walford in June 2024, causing a stir when it was revealed they were Stevie Mitchell’s secret family. Mum Nicola joined later, having spent time behind bars for injecting unlicensed filler.

Laura says it can be intense filming dramatic scenes, so the cast often try to lighten the mood in between takes. “The boys and I often burst into song between takes,” she reveals. “It’s hilarious when you belt out a tune and no one else joins in and you’re like, ‘That song was too random.’

Laura was nominated at this year’s Soap Awards(Image: BBC/Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron)

“I’m high energy, a bit like a cocker spaniel most of the time. Then I realise that I have to portray the character and I’ll take a minute to focus and get back into Nicola’s head.” Although very different to her villainous character, Laura says they do share one quality. “I relate to her protectiveness of her children,” she says.

Letting her young son watch her EastEnders entrance last year was the first and last episode he’s seen. “He turned to me and he said, ‘Mummy, you’re not very nice in this, are you?’ I went, ‘No I’m not, lovely.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you mind if I don’t watch it?’ In my head I was going, ‘Thank God – I mean, you were never going to watch it!’”

With a murder, an affair and a huge family secret now exposed, is there a future for Nicola on the soap? “There’s always redemption,” Laura jokes. “The knock-on effect of a secret of 16 years coming out would bring drama into anyone’s life. In Nicola and the boys’ case I think there’s a journey to be had in that. It’ll be interesting to see what she will do, how she repairs it with Barney.”

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Hoping to be an Albert Square favourite for years to come, Laura says, “I don’t want to go yet! But in the end that’s not up to me. Everything is finite. I will just enjoy every moment that I’m here.”

See Laura in EastEnders on Monday to Thursday (with an extra show this week on Friday), 7.30pm, BBC One and BBC iPlayer

June 9, 2025

India-Pakistan conflict claims an unlikely victim: Himalayan pink salt

By 234Radio in News, World News

For the past three decades, Vipan Kumar has been importing Himalayan pink salt from Pakistan to sell in India.

However, New Delhi banned the import of all Pakistani goods, including those routed through third countries, after the killing of 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir in April. Kumar, the 50-year-old trader based in Amritsar in Punjab, the spiritual hub of Sikhs in India, told Al Jazeera that the ban has brought his business to a screeching halt.

Kumar says he typically sold 2,000 to 2,500 tonnes of pink salt every quarter. “The profit margin is very thin, but still, the business is feasible because of the bulk sales. But the ban has completely halted the pink salt business. We don’t know when the situation would turn normal,” he told Al Jazeera.

Himalayan pink salt has a pinkish tint due to a trace of minerals, including iron, and is used in cooking, decorative lamps and spa treatments. Hindus also prefer to use this salt during their religious fasts as it is a non-marine salt.

Mined in Pakistan

The Himalayan pink salt is mined at the Khewra Salt Mine in the Punjab province of Pakistan, the second-largest salt mine in the world after the Sifto Salt Mine in Ontario, Canada. Khewra is located about 250km (155 miles) from the city of Lahore, which also at times lends its name to the pink salt – Lahori namak, which is Hindi for salt.

The salt mine contains about 82 million metric tonnes of salt, and 0.36 million metric tonnes are extracted every year. About 70 percent of the salt is used for industrial purposes, and the rest is for edible use.

“The mine is very scenic and attracts several thousand tourists every year,” Fahad Ali, a journalist who lives close to the mine, told Al Jazeera.

It has approximately 30 salt processing units, where the huge rock salt boulders are hand-mined and loaded on trucks before being dispatched, he said.

The salt is exported in a raw form to India, where importers process, grind and pack it for sale.

Prices swell

India mostly depends on Pakistan for this pink salt.

But after the Pahalgam killings, India announced an end to all trade with Pakistan, which reciprocated the ban. The halt in trade was one of a series of diplomatic and economic tit-for-tat measures the neighbours took against each other before an intense four-day exchange of missiles and drones, which took the two countries to the cusp of a full-fledged war.

On May 10, they stepped back from the brink, agreeing to a truce. However, the trade ban remains in place.

Salt traders in India told Al Jazeera that the current pause in imports has started to hamper their business as prices are starting to rise.

“It has been barely over a month since the announcement of the ban, and prices have already gone up,” said Gurveen Singh, an Amritsar-based trader, who blamed traders with existing stocks for selling them at higher prices.

“The salt, which was sold in the retail market for 45 rupees to 50 rupees per kilogramme [$0.53 to $0.58] before the ban is now being sold for at least 60 rupees per kilogramme [$0.70],” Singh said.

In some places, the price is even higher. In Kolkata this week, pink salt was being sold in markets for between 70 and 80 rupees per kg [$0.82 to $0.93].

“We have no idea when the situation would return to normal. There would be complete crisis once the stocks get exhausted,” he said.

The rates, however, go up even more on the other side of India, in the east, due to the cost of transporting the salt from Amritsar.

Traders in Kolkata told Al Jazeera that the prices of the salt have gone up by 15-20 percent in the city, but that has not yet hampered demand.

“The Himalayan rock salt remains in huge demand across the year, especially during festivals when people remain on fast and prefer the pink salt over the marine salt that is produced in India,” said Sanjay Agarwal, a manager in a private firm that deals in pink salt.

Dinobondhu Mukherjee, a salt trader in Kolkata, said that the government should look for an alternative country to procure this salt. “The relations between the two countries are usually strained, and that affects the trade. Our government should look for alternative countries to procure the salt so that the supply chain is never disrupted,” Mukherjee told Al Jazeera.

Pakistani exporters, however, said that the Indian ban would have a “positive impact” on their trade. Indian traders, they said, brand their salt as their own to sell on the international market at higher prices.

“The recent ban would help us to expand further as it would wipe off the competition from India,” Faizan Panjwani, the chief operating officer of the Karachi-based RM Salt, told Al Jazeera.

“Undoubtedly, India is a big market and has a lot of potential, but we want to send the salt by doing value-addition and not in raw form. Our salt is already in huge demand globally,” he said.

Trade decline

Trade between the two countries has been decreasing since a 2019 attack on security forces in Pulwama, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in which 40 security personnel were killed. In response, India revoked the non-discriminatory market status – better known as the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status – it had granted to Pakistan, which had ensured equal treatment between the trade partners. It also imposed heavy tariffs of 200 percent on imports from Pakistan.

According to India’s Ministry of Commerce, the country’s exports to Pakistan from April 2024 to January 2025 stood at $447.7m, while Pakistan’s exports to India during the same period were a paltry $420,000.

In 2024, India imported about 642 metric tonnes of pink salt, which was far lower than the 74,457 metric tonnes imported in 2018 – largely as a result of the high tariffs.

Prior to the latest ban, India’s major exports to Pakistan included cotton, organic chemicals, spices, food products, pharmaceuticals, plastic articles and dairy products. India normally imports copper articles, raw cotton, fruits, salt, minerals and some speciality chemicals from Pakistan.

“The implementation of the heavy-duty had raised the import price of the salt from 3.50 rupees [$0.041] per kilogramme to 24.50 rupees [$0.29] per kilogramme in 2019, even though the salt was being routed from the third country like Dubai,” trader Kumar told Al Jazeera.

“Still, it had not impacted our business as the demand was too high, and buyers were ready to pay the price. But the government, this time, has also prohibited the entry of Pakistani goods from any third country, which has brought the supply to a complete standstill,” he said.

One unusual industry that is being hurt by the ban is lamps made from the Himalayan pink rock salt that are used as decorative lights and even tout unproven claims of being air purifiers.

June 9, 2025

Why golden-era Belgium came to dread ‘bogey team’ Wales

By 234Radio in News, Sports News

Getty Images

Dafydd Pritchard

BBC Sport Wales in Brussels

3 hours ago

World Cup qualifier: Belgium v Wales

Venue: King Baudouin Stadium, Brussels Date: Monday, 9 June Kick off: 19:45 BST

Kevin de Bruyne once said he was “bored” with facing Wales, such was the regularity of their games against Belgium.

The Manchester City midfielder made the comment in 2022 as Belgium were preparing to take on Wales for the ninth time in 10 years.

Tongue in cheek as the quip perhaps seemed, De Bruyne might have added that these meetings also carry a sense of dread for Belgians.

Despite Belgium’s lofty world ranking and galaxy of stellar talents, at one stage during their decade-long rivalry Wales enjoyed a four-match unbeaten run against their illustrious opponents, including two wins that rank among the greatest in their history.

In 2015, Gareth Bale’s goal secured a seismic European Championship qualifying victory in Cardiff which propelled Wales towards their first major tournament for more than half a century.

Then a year later, at Euro 2016 itself, Belgium – among the pre-tournament favourites – were blown away in Lille as Wales stormed to an historic and euphoric 3-1 quarter-final win which took them to stratospheric new heights.

“For me it was one of the greatest games in Welsh football,” says Joe Ledley, who played in both victories.

“I don’t know what it is, they’re just one of those teams. Wales are a bogey team for Belgium.”

‘A special night that made a nation believe’

Welsh football had known hope before. Now there was expectation.

Wales had not played at a major tournament since the 1958 World Cup but, with world-class players such as Bale and Aaron Ramsey in their prime, there was growing belief that the wait could soon be over.

And after years of hype and hypotheticals about this golden generation, Wales started their qualifying campaign for Euro 2016 in a manner that suggested, this time, this was real.

Unbeaten in their opening five matches, in June 2015 Wales hosted a Belgian side ranked second in the world – and featuring the likes of Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku and De Bruyne – having already held them to a goalless draw in Brussels.

“We were going into that game not expected to win, but we worked so hard,” says Ledley. “You want to play against the best players in the world and, for me, Belgium was that team.

“Fitness levels were all over the place. A few of our players in the Championship and League One were finished three weeks before. You could see the ones who’d been away on a lads’ holiday!”

If preparations were not ideal, Wales hid it well with a ferociously energetic and disciplined display.

Manager Chris Coleman had sprung a surprise with his team selection as he started fringe Swansea City defender Jazz Richards at right-wing-back. Chris Gunter, who usually played there, shifted to the right of a back three for the first time in his international career.

It proved to be an inspired move as together they stifled the threat of that year’s Premier League player of the season, Hazard, on Belgium’s left.

“The whole defensive unit and team, all our roles and responsibilities were really clear. We had trust in whoever was playing in each position,” Gunter recalls.

“The aim before any campaign was to qualify and we always said we needed to start one well and get some momentum, so we had done that. Then it was ‘right, if we’re serious about this, we have to take points off the best team in the group’.

“It had all the ingredients of a really special football night in Wales. It was a Friday night, there was rain, but it was warm and the atmosphere was incredible.”

Wales delivered a performance to match the occasion, as Bale fired past Thibaut Courtois in the first half to send a heaving Cardiff City Stadium into raptures.

Belgium pressed for an equaliser but, inspired by the home crowd’s spellbinding, impromptu rendition of the Welsh national anthem, Wales clung on for a heroic victory.

“The belief after that result, you could feel it, not just with us players, but with the fans as well, and you could sense we were on the verge of qualifying,” says Ledley.

“Fans play a massive part. I think at Cardiff City Stadium that night they carried us over that finish line.”

More than possible, this result made qualification probable.

Even with their team three points clear at the top of the qualifying group, some Wales fans still needed some convincing.

After all, it had been 57 years since Wales had been to a major tournament and that barren period was littered with agonising tales of near misses.

But this time was different.

“There was a real belief inside the changing room and the squad, and maybe for the fans it was more hope and desperation for us to do it,” says Gunter.

“I think definitely after that win, everybody really believed.”

Victory in Cyprus the following September put Wales in touching distance, only for a goalless draw at home to Israel to delay the celebrations.

Once you have waited 57 years, though, a month does not seem so long. Wales finally sealed qualification in Bosnia-Herzegovina when they suffered their only defeat of the campaign, but had their place in France confirmed by Cyprus’ win in Israel.

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‘It was meant to be’ – Wales’ greatest game of all

To be Welsh in France during Euro 2016 was to live a dreamlike existence.

Simply seeing the country play at a major tournament was enough for many. The opening win over Slovakia in Bordeaux was glorious, and the dismantling of Russia in Toulouse brought joy that few thought was possible.

After those group-stage victories and a tense second-round triumph over Northern Ireland, they were reunited with Belgium for a quarter-final in Lille.

“Euro 2016 is still seen as the major opportunity for the golden generation to win a trophy,” says Bart Lagae, a journalist for Belgian newspaper De Standaard.

“They should have gone through and beaten Wales, probably beaten Portugal [the eventual champions]. Most feelings Belgians have about Wales are based on that night in Lille.”

Among the pre-tournament favourites, Belgium thought they were about to rid themselves of their nuisance opponents when Radja Nainggolan put them in front with a stunning long-range strike.

“I think the reason we started a bit slowly is because a lot of us were probably still hungover from the Northern Ireland game,” Ledley jokes.

“Maybe the pressure and the hype got to us. But once we conceded, you could see the pressure release and then we just came out of our shells and absolutely destroyed them.”

Ashley Williams headed Wales level shortly before half-time, haring over to celebrate with his team-mates and coaches on the bench so quickly that he clocked his fastest running speed of the tournament.

This was no fluke, though. Wales missed several chances to take the lead before Hal Robson-Kanu, without a club having been released by Reading, scored a goal to rank among the finest in European Championship history, bamboozling Belgian defenders with a Cruyff turn and finishing with a flourish.

In the 85th minute, Gunter received the ball on the right wing. Manager Chris Coleman was on the opposite touchline, screaming – with some amusingly industrial language, a documentary later revealed – for the wing-back to take the ball to the corner to waste time.

Gunter, a pragmatic defender by nature, could not hear those instructions, and it was just as well because he delivered the cross of his life for Sam Vokes to head in Wales’ third goal.

“For sure, that was my best cross,” Gunter says with a bashful smile. “There weren’t many other good ones!

“It’s funny, even now when you bump into different people from Wales, the more the years go by, the more I’ve heard it [Coleman’s quote].

“He was spot on to tell me not to cross it. If that happened another 100 times, it’s definitely not going on Vokesy’s head. It was just meant to be.”

‘Will there be another Robson-Kanu this time?’

Since those landmark Welsh wins, the teams have met four times, with two draws in Wales and two wins for Belgium on home soil.

While Belgium have been widely regarded as underachievers during that period, perhaps unfairly when they finished third at the 2018 World Cup, Wales built on their 2016 success by qualifying for the next European Championships as well as their first World Cup for 64 years.

By now, the teams look very different; only a few players remain from their respective golden eras.

Bale and Hazard may no longer be around, but both sides have gradually ushered in a new age.

Belgium still boast a squad of enviable depth and quality, with Manchester City’s Jeremy Doku among the emerging stars of recent years.

Their evolution has been uncomfortable at times, as Friday night’s draw in North Macedonia demonstrated, a result that made it one win in eight games for the Red Devils.

Belgium are six points behind Wales with two games in hand, and Craig Bellamy has made it clear his side will be going all out for victory in Brussels, refusing to sit back and settle for a draw.

“Sometimes when you play a team a lot, it can actually be more challenging because you have a shorter distance of analysis in between matches, and you know each other,” says Luke Benstead, Belgium’s head analyst under previous managers Roberto Martinez and Domenico Tedesco.

“With the introduction of Craig Bellamy, you see they’ve gone to another level, and you can see this is the type of coach that is forward-thinking, wants to be on the front foot.

“Belgium also have huge talent, great young players coming through, and I think no team underestimates each other, no matter how much they play, and it’ll be a great contest with both teams going for it.”

Iffy as their recent form might be, Belgium will still be favourites to win but, as history has shown, that offers no guarantees when they play Wales.

“Most people think Belgium should be able to win the game,” says Lagae. “There’s still a feeling of Wales as a bit of a bogey team, they certainly seem to make us play worse than we should be able to.