Washington, DC – The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, has filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the administration of US President Donald Trump’s construction of a sprawling ballroom connected to the east wing of the White House.
The lawsuit filed on Friday targets one of Trump’s signature initiatives: a 90,000-square-foot (27,432-square-metre) addition to the seat of the US executive branch.
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Preservationists have previously criticised the transformative project for altering the character of the iconic building and for the Trump administration’s failure to follow the proper review process. However, the lawsuit on Friday is the first formal effort to halt construction.
“The White House is arguably the most evocative building in our country and a globally recognised symbol of our powerful American ideals,” Carol Quillen, the president of the organisation, said in a statement.
“As the organisation charged with protecting places where our history happened, the National Trust was compelled to file this case,” she said.
The filing charges that the Trump administration has violated several laws in beginning construction of the ballroom, including failing to file plans with the National Capital Planning Commission; failing to prepare an environmental assessment; and failing to obtain congressional approval for construction in a federal park.
It further states that the totality of the administration’s actions violates the property clause of the US Constitution, which “reserves to Congress the right to dispose of and make all rules regarding property belonging to the United States”.
The organisation had previously sent a letter to the National Capital Planning Commission, the National Park Service, and the Commission of Fine Arts calling for a pause in construction.
The Trump administration has not immediately responded to Friday’s lawsuit but has maintained that planning and construction of the ballroom have been conducted in compliance with the law.
In October, Trump aide Steven Cheung, in a post on X, accused the organisation of being “run by a bunch of loser Democrats and liberal donors who are playing political games”.
Presidential priority
Trump, a real estate magnate known for a personal taste that tends toward the garish and gilded, has championed the construction of a new ballroom.
The president began demolishing a portion of the White House’s east wing in October. He said the ballroom will seat nearly 1,000 people, up from the 650 seats the administration had previously announced.
The price has ballooned from $200m to $300m, although the administration has maintained that the funding is coming from private donors.
While Trump has sought to transform the powers of the executive office and reshape the wider US government, the construction would be the most lasting physical change in Washington, DC, since he took office.
Critics have said the ballroom would dwarf the White House’s current 55,000-square-foot (16,764-square-metre) footprint and disrupt the balance of the smaller east and west wings.
The Strictly Come Dancing star is back on screens tonight for a very different, important role, alongside television presenter Davina McCall
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Vicky Pattison pictured with Strictly host Tess Daly and her dance partner Kai Widdrington(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Guy Levy)
Vicky Pattison is stepping into a new presenting role this evening, following her recent appearance on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. The 38 -year-old will join forces with Adam Hills, Hannah Fry and Davina McCall to host Channel 4’s Stand Up To Cancer.
The show makes its return with a renewed campaign, launched by Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK, aimed at promoting NHS cancer screening programmes and generating funds for pioneering cancer research.
Discussing her involvement, she commented: “I’m so proud to be part of Stand Up To Cancer, live on Channel 4 on 12th December.
“I’ve supported cancer-related causes for many years, taking part in major fundraising treks and awareness campaigns for breast cancer, and it means a great deal to continue championing such important work.
“Early diagnosis is key to better survival and outcomes, and I’d encourage everyone to use the screening checker to see what screening they’re eligible for.”
Vicky’s new presenting gig comes after her recent appearance on Strictly, where she became the seventh celebrity to be eliminated from the competition.
The former Geordie Shore personality was paired with professional dancer Kai Widdrington for the series, and the duo are set to reunite on the dance floor next month for the nationwide tour.
Looking back on her departure from the show, she admitted to feeling sad when the judges opted to save Balvinder Sopal instead of her.
However, during an appearance on Pete Wicks’ Staying Relevant podcast, she made sure to dismiss any notion of animosity between herself and Balvinder.
Speaking about her preferred winner, she revealed: “Kaz [Karen Carney] and George [Clarke] I love, I love them so much. And like they’re the ones I speak to the most.
“And it’s hard because everybody I love so much. And also, everyone thinks I would feel a certain way about Balvinder, like she smashed that dance off.”
Vicky continued to champion the EastEnders actress as being “mentally resilient” and a “wonderful woman”, who improves each week.
“So, I just want to go on record and say that I love her,” she added. “But I will say George or Kaz [to win].”
During the podcast, Vicky also opened up about the Jive routine that led to her departure.
Reflecting on the performance, the reality star said she will “forever hate” it and insisted she wished she hadn’t done it.
“I am actually quite a bouncy person, so I think people would assume I really had the Jive in me like that, but I don’t think anyone anticipated me as being like a dignified ballroom girl, but I really took to ballroom and loved it,” she added.
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Vicky revealed she felt down “for about a week” following her exit, but shared her appreciation for the “lovely support structure” she received from family and fellow Strictly contestants.
Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah is in the squad for Saturday’s Premier League match against Brighton after positive talks with head coach Arne Slot on Friday.
It is understood the decision was made with Slot wanting to act in the best interests of the club, particularly with a number of players out through injury.
Issues still remain unresolved and those will continue to be tackled by Liverpool and Salah’s agent, Ramy Abbas, while the player is at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Salah, 33, was left out of the travelling squad for Liverpool’s Champions League trip to Inter Milan on Tuesday after claiming his relationship with Slot had broken down and that he had been “thrown under the bus”.
That outburst came at Elland Road following Liverpool’s 3-3 draw against Leeds, where the forward was on the bench for the third game in a row.
In that interview, Salah said that Saturday’s game would be an opportunity to say goodbye to Anfield and that he had invited his mother to attend.
In his pre-game news conference earlier on Friday, Slot said there were “no reasons to not want Mohamed Salah to stay” at the club.
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Liverpool face Brighton at Anfield at 15:00 GMT on Saturday as they look to improve on two successive league draws.
Salah, who has scored 250 goals in 420 appearances for the Reds, has been an unused substitute in two of Liverpool’s past three Premier League games.
He last played in the 1-1 draw against Sunderland on 3 December as a substitute and his last start was on 26 November in the Champions League defeat by PSV Eindhoven.
With Cody Gakpo sidelined because of a muscle injury and Alexander Isak struggling with a knock, Liverpool are short of attacking options for Saturday.
“After the Sunderland game, there were a lot of conversations between his representatives and ours, between him and me,” Slot said.
Salah is set to depart for the Africa Cup of Nations on Monday and, depending on how far Egypt go in the competition, might not return to Merseyside until after the final on 18 January.
He could miss up to eight Liverpool games if Egypt reach the final in Morocco.
The global fight against doping has “stalled”, with athletes evading detection systems that are failing to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated cheats, a leading anti-doping official has warned.
Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) Chair David Howman had already delivered a stark assessment at last week’s World Conference on Doping in Sport, declaring that despite his organisation’s proven track record of identifying rule-breakers, they are “not catching enough of them”.
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The number of international disciplinary cases brought by the AIU has increased from 62 in 2021 to 100 in 2024, according to the body’s annual reports, while national cases went up from 185 to 305.
“Let’s be honest and pragmatic … intentional dopers at elite level are evading detection. We are not effective enough nowadays in catching cheats,” said Howman, who previously spent 13 years as director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Among the elite athletes banned or suspended this year was women’s marathon world record-holder Ruth Chepngetich after the Kenyan admitted to anti-doping rule violations.
Chepngetich was banned for three years, but her record will remain on the books as it was set before her positive test.
Others include the United States’s Olympic 100 metres silver and bronze medallist Fred Kerley, who was provisionally suspended in August for whereabouts failures, and world 100 metres silver medallist Marvin Bracy, who accepted a 45-month sanction for anti-doping rule violations last month.
Howman’s blunt admission highlighted a troubling reality for clean sport advocates. While education programmes help deter some potential cheats, he said they are powerless against the most determined rule-breakers at sport’s highest levels.
“We have great education programmes which help, but they don’t impact the intentional rule-breakers in elite sport,” Howman acknowledged.
The AIU chief warned that the system’s inability to outsmart the cheats is undermining public confidence in anti-doping efforts.
“Our ineffectiveness in dealing with those who are beating the rules is hurting the anti-doping movement’s credibility, with the resulting risk that our clean-sport message falls on deaf ears,” he said.
Howman also called for a fundamental shift from mere box-ticking compliance to supporting “ambitious anti-doping efforts” that could actually catch clever cheats.
“A renewed focus on scientific research with closer alignment between WADA and cutting-edge ADOs [anti-doping organisations] on research priorities and opportunities would be beneficial,” he added.
Auchinleck Talbot have taken the “difficult and extremely disappointing” decision to move their Scottish Cup fourth round tie against Celtic to Kilmarnock’s Rugby Park.
The West of Scotland League Premier Division side say there were concerns over whether surrounding infrastructure could cope with such a high-profile event, having taken advice from the Scottish FA and Police Scotland.
The Ayrshire club’s Beechwood Park ground holds 4,000 people, compared to the 15,000-capacity stadium 15 miles up the A76.
The tie between the sixth-tier outfit and the 42-time champions will take place on Sunday, 18 January and will be broadcast live on Premier Sports.
In a statement, Auchinleck Talbot said: “Following various meetings and lengthy discussions involving East Ayrshire Council, Police Scotland, and the Scottish Football Association, the club has taken the difficult and extremely disappointing decision to relocate our Men’s Scottish Cup fourth round tie against Celtic to Rugby Park.
“Although Beechwood Park meets and goes beyond the SFA Club Licensing Entry Level criteria in certain areas, various concerns the club could not ignore arose in relation to the ability of the surrounding infrastructure to cope with such a high-profile event that has brought worldwide interest to the village of Auchinleck and Auchinleck Talbot F.C.
“The club thanks East Ayrshire Council Events & Resilience, Police Scotland, Scottish Football Association, Celtic F.C. & Kilmarnock F.C. for their input and assistance during this process.”
Meanwhile, BBC Scotland will broadcast two fourth-round ties.
30 November
1 December
Scottish Cup fourth round ties live on BBC
Dunfermline Athletic v Hibernian – Saturday, 17 January (12:30)
Aberdeen v Raith Rovers – Sunday, 18 January (14:30)
Comic actor Stanley Baxter in character as James Bond circa 1974.(Image: TV Times/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
For decades he was one of the biggest stars on television. And no wonder. A gifted mimic, comedian and actor, Stanley Baxter, who has died at the age of 99, commanded audiences of 20 million with his shows for both ITV and the BBC during the 1970s and 80s.
In the end, TV executives pulled the plug on them – in a changing world they simply became too expensive to produce.
But those standalone extravaganzas, which saw Stanley spoof everything from Dallas and Upstairs, Downstairs to the Queen’s Christmas message, stand as a reminder of a different age when the nation sat down together to be entertained.
Yesterday, as tributes poured in for the Glasgow-born star, who died on Thursday at a London care home for entertainment figures, his friend and biographer Brian Beacom described him as “one of the most entertaining people I’ve ever met”.
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“He was funny, he was mischievous, he was always incredibly clever and able to come up with comedy in a way that few people could even consider. But just as importantly, he was a terrific friend. He had an incredible warmth and consideration for other people and it’s no surprise that he was an entertainer from the 1930s onwards and he never upset a single soul.”
Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney called him ‘a giant of Scottish entertainment.’ “He brought incredible joy to generations,” he added. Meanwhile Scottish radio and TV broadcaster Robin Galloway said his death was a loss of ‘a true original’ and a ‘comic visionary’ while BAFTA said it was ‘saddened’ to hear of his death.
Stanley Baxter was born on May 24, 1926. He inherited a love of the theatre and performing from his mum, Bessie, who encouraged his talent for mimicry. At just six and dressed in a sailor suit, he would bring the house down with impersonations of Laurel and Hardy, and Mae West.
He made his professional debut at the age of 14 on the Scottish edition of the BBCs Children’s Hour, but world events intervened and during World War Two he was conscripted to work in the Lanarkshire coal mines as a ‘Bevan Boy’.
By 1945 he had his call up papers for National Service and joined the Combined Services Entertainment Unit, honing his skills by entertaining the troops. It was there he met Carry On Star Kenneth Williams – who became a lifelong friend. By the late 1940s he was back in Glasgow, enjoying success in variety theatre, in particular as a panto dame and on radio.
He made his TV debut in the BBC’s variety show Shop Window in 1952, but his major screen break came with the satirical On The Bright Side in 1959. It was here he performed his famous ‘Parliamo Glasgow’ sketch – a spoof language programme where, as a supposed scholar, he endeavours to teach the world how to speak like a Glaswegian.
With his star on the rise, films offers also came in, including Very Important Person (1961), in which he played a fiercely nationalistic Scot, as well as Geordie (1955), The Fast Lady (1962) and And Father Came Too! (1963). In 1963 his hard work was finally rewarded – and his reputation as an entertainer cemented – with the arrival on our screens of The Stanley Baxter Show. It ran for eight years and catapulted him to stardom.
But while his professional life was taking off, his private life was in turmoil. Having known as a teenager he was gay, Stanley Baxter struggled with his sexuality for most of his life and battled to repress his feelings. He married his wife Moira, a fellow actor, in 1951. They lived apart from the 1970s onwards.
Meanwhile, his career went from strength to strength. A number of TV spectaculars followed, including Stanley Baxter’s Christmas Box. One of his – and his audiences’ – favourite conceits was to recreate scenes from well known big budget Hollywood movies for comic effect, with Stanley playing multiple roles.
He was also bold enough to mimic the Pope and even the Queen – a move which left the nation breathless with both shock and laughter. His shows were hugely popular, won him awards and attracted audiences of millions, thrilled by his comedic skill and attention to detail – he would frequently spend an entire year working on the programmes. The cost in time, sets and staffing was enormous, though, and led to his contracts being terminated early both by the BBC and by London Weekend Television.
Undaunted by the setbacks, he branched out and away from sketch shows and impressions, to perform in Joe Orton’s controversial farce, What The Butler Saw, in the West End alongside Sir Ralph Richardson. He guest-starred in one of the episodes of The Goodies and later appeared in the lead role of Mr Majeika, a children’s show about a magic teacher expelled from Walpurgis, the wizard land, for failing his wizarding exams.
After his retirement, he appeared in 2004 in a series of three half-hour radio sitcoms for BBC Radio 4, entitled Stanley Baxter And Friends. He also lent his voice to the animated children’s film Arabian Knight and the TV series Meeow. Later Channel 4 also screened two specials combining old highlights with new material and from 2006 he went on to record a number of plays, The Stanley Baxter Playhouse, for Radio 4.
He received several awards during his career, including a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards and two TV tribute programmes. Bafta Scotland also presented Baxter with their Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television Award in December 2020. A well read and private man, Stanley Baxter remained married to Moira until her death in 1997, despite them both knowing he was gay. They never divorced and had lunch together daily.
In 2020 he released a co-written biography, The Real Stanley Baxter, in which revealed he was gay and had told his wife before they married. In the book he recalls: “I never wanted to be gay. I still don’t.” Stanley Baxter leaves a younger sister, Alice Warwick, along with her son Tony and daughter Zoe. His long-term partner Louis died in 2017. At his own request, his funeral will be a small private ceremony in the company of family and close friends, and there will be no memorial service or memorial plaques.
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