“The three promises Buhari made coming into power are still the issues bedevilling Nigeria today.”
Nigerians “divided” over former President Buhari’s legacy
EastEnders’ James Bye’s son, two, rushed to hospital after eating ‘toxic’ plant
EastEnders’ James Bye’s two-year-old young son was rushed to hospital after eating a ‘seriously toxic’ plant.
The youngest child of the actor needed medical help after “projectile” vomiting, the star’s wife has announced. The family are said to have then received a “stark warning” from a doctor following a diagnosis.
Victoria Bye told of the terrifying situation on Instagram and issued an urgent warning to other parents. Victoria, 42, who has four children with James, 41 – who played Martin Fowler on the BBC show for more than a decade – and the scary moment came when his tongue suddenly started to swell.
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lifewiththebyes/Instagram)
Rufus was diagnosed with gastroenteritis whilst the family spent some time at the home of James’ parents. She suggested that a doctor’s warning that it was “contagious” proved to be right, with Victoria teasing that she later ended up unwell herself. She wrote: “More of a public service announcement than a post really but as we all know, life with kids is anything but predictable.
“So, after spending the night in hospital (I swear they’ll start charging us rent soon) after Rufus decided to snack on a plant in the garden — one I didn’t even know was dangerous. All hell let loose. (full video in next post – wouldn’t let me post here).”
“Within minutes his tongue had started to swell, he was screaming & we had to call 999.
(As always – NHS heroes, honestly.) “Thankfully he’s absolutely fine now but it turned out the culprit was Italian Arum, a really common plant with bright orange berries that looks innocent but is seriously toxic if ingested.
“I mean, I had no idea. And once I started looking into it… turns out there are loads of plants like that quietly minding their own (deadly) business in UK gardens. So, in true mum fashion, I made a list. For anyone else who didn’t know either. Because no one needs that kind of adrenaline.”
Later, she returned with a second video reminding Rufus and their other children that “the garden is NOT a snack cupboard!” James met his wife nearly twenty years ago, and says he caught her eye when he was dressed as a pineapple for work.
James was among those who liked the post and he also reacted in the comments section. Alongside a nauseous-looking emoji, he teased to his wife: “Did I mention I’m staying away for the rest of the week.” Beside a laughing emoji, Victoria replied: “Nice try … you’re on poo duty.”
The following day, Victoria shared in an update to fans: “Still in the trenches here with this dreaded sickness malarkey … thank you honestly for all your get well wishes.” She then teased: “I’m trying not to complain too much.”
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Lapid, Olmert slam Israel’s plans for ‘concentration camps’ in Gaza’s Rafah
Two prominent Israeli politicians have criticised plans by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up what it calls a “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza, saying the proposal would amount to interning Palestinians in a “concentration camp”.
Former Prime Ministers Yair Lapid and Ehud Olmert levelled the criticism on Sunday as Israeli forces continued to bombard Gaza, killing at least 95 Palestinians over the course of the day.
Lapid, the leader of Israel’s biggest opposition party, told Israeli Army Radio that “nothing good” would come out of the plans to establish the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of the city of Rafah.
“It’s a bad idea from every possible perspective – security, political, economic, logistical,” he said.
“I don’t prefer to describe a humanitarian city as a concentration camp, but if exiting it is prohibited, then it is a concentration camp,” he added.
Lapid served as Israel’s prime minister for six months in 2022.
According to the Israeli government, the “humanitarian city” will initially house 600,000 displaced Palestinians currently living in tents in the overcrowded area of al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coast. But eventually, the enclave’s entire population of more than two million people is to be moved there.
Satellite images have shown Israeli forces have stepped up demolition operations in Rafah in recent months. On April 4, the number of destroyed buildings stood at about 15,800. By July 4, the number had gone up to 28,600.
Olmert, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, also slammed the Israeli plan.
“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” he told the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper.
“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” he said. “When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have at least.”
Ethnic cleansing
Humanitarian officials also have said the plan for the internment camp in Rafah would lay the groundwork for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini – head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, which has been banned by Israel – asked last week if the plan would result in a “second Nakba”. The term refers to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel.
“This would de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations,” Lazzarini said, adding that it would “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland”.
The Israeli government insisted the transfer of Palestinians to the internment camp in Rafah would be “voluntary” while Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump have continued to tout their proposal to forcibly transfer all of the Palestinians in Gaza out of the enclave.
Netanyahu said during a dinner with Trump last week that Israel was working with the US “very closely about finding countries that will seek to realise what they always say, that they want to give the Palestinians a better future”.
For his part, the US president said “we’ve had great cooperation from [countries] surrounding Israel” and “something good will happen” soon.
Israel’s neighbours and other Arab states, however, have roundly rejected any plans to displace Palestinians from Gaza, and so have the war-weary Palestinians of the coastal enclave.
The Reuters news agency, meanwhile, has reported that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US- and Israeli-backed group distributing aid in Gaza, had floated plans to build large-scale camps called “humanitarian transit areas” inside and possibly outside the Palestinian territory.
The proposal, created sometime after February 11, outlines a vision of “replacing Hamas’ control over the population in Gaza” with the GHF describing the camps as places where Palestinians could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so”, according to Reuters.
The GHF is the main group that the Israeli military currently permits to distribute food in Gaza.
The group had set up four distribution sites in southern and central Gaza but currently operates a single point near Rafah. Since its operations began at the end of May, Israeli forces have killed at least 800 Palestinians seeking aid at the GHF’s sites.
Israel wants the GHF to supplant the United Nations in Gaza and take over all aid operations.
Human rights groups and experts say the GHF is also part of Israeli plans to push the Palestinian population to the south and eventually out of the Gaza Strip.
Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera that the killings at the GHF sites and now the plan for the internment camp make it clear that “Israel’s ultimate goal here is the physical destruction of Gaza, the engineered collapse of Palestinian society there and the forcible depopulation of the entirety of the Strip.”
He said Israel’s plan was to concentrate the Palestinian population and put “pressure on them so their choice on a daily basis is between starvation and being shot”.
Open winner Harrington ‘got ball rolling’ on Irish golden era
When Padraig Harrington finished one shot away from the play-off for The Open title in 2002, few observers would have anticipated Irish golf being on the threshold of an extraordinary period of unprecedented glory.
It seemed just another near miss. But since 2007, the island of Ireland has produced 11 men’s major victories.
It also ended a 68-year wait to stage an Open, and did it so well that just six years later, the championship returns to the Antrim coast, doing so this week.
A sellout crowd of nearly 280,000 people will flock to Royal Portrush and no doubt regenerate a uniquely fervent Irish atmosphere, one that is already firmly embedded in Open folklore.
The passion will be stoked because Northern Ireland boasts a Grand Slam-winning Masters champion in Rory McIlroy. And this is the venue where Irishman Shane Lowry claimed an astonishing Open victory in 2019.
Such a sustained gloriously golden period was barely imaginable when Harrington was bogeying Muirfield’s last hole to miss out on a four-man shootout for the title 23 years ago.
At that stage Portrush native Fred Daly, the Open champion of 1947, had provided the island of Ireland’s only major success.
“We had good players in the past,” Harrington told BBC Sport.
‘I said I would win majors, plural’
Harrington was a different animal. He first won The Open at Carnoustie 18 years ago, successfully defended the title at Royal Birkdale and then went to Oakland Hills and won the US PGA Championship.
Three major wins in 13 months. “Padraig got the ball rolling,” said McIlroy, who made his Open debut in 2007 and finished as the leading amateur. “I think the other Irish players looked at that and that gave them belief.”
Harrington, who last month won the US Senior’s Open for the second time, continues to possess a competitive edge that sets him apart. “I did two things,” he said.
“One, I always talked about majors, that I would win plural majors. I talked myself up.
“But I think the second thing came a bit with my personality. A bit instinctively, I didn’t realise I wasn’t meant to win.
“Whereas the guys who went before me thought, no, an Irish guy can’t do that, I didn’t have any ceiling on what was possible.
“That’s how I got through the amateur game. That’s how I got through at all stages because I wasn’t always the most beautiful swinger of the golf club or anything like that.
“So a lot of times I succeeded by purely not knowing any different, keeping my head down and doing my thing and I think that’s really helped me.”
And Harrington’s major wins had a ripple effect on geographically his closest colleagues. Graeme McDowell won the US Open at Pebble Beach in 2010, and McIlroy kept the trophy in Northern Ireland the following year.
“I would have helped the following on Irish guys,” Harrington said. “They could say, ‘hang on a second, we were number one in the amateur game in Ireland. We played with Paddy. We know what he’s like. I can do that.'”
‘We knew it would be a success’
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement – the deal that brought an end to 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles – opened up further possibilities.
McIlroy told me: “That momentum that we all had was there at that period of time and in conjunction with the R&A looking at Royal Portrush to potentially host the Open Championship again.
“And then for it to go there, I think it’s [down to] Irish golf and the players that have come through and how well that we’ve done.
“But I also think it’s a great representation of how far Northern Ireland has come in the last 30 or 40 years.
“Because in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, no one would have dreamed of hosting an Open Championship in Northern Ireland in those times.”
Harrington agreed. “Once it went there, we knew it would be a success,” said the 53-year-old Dubliner.
‘Lowry’s win icing on the cake’
After the 2012 Irish Open was staged at the Antrim course, attracting huge numbers and player praise, the R&A intensified its feasibility studies.
“There was a bit of work behind the scenes talking it up, emphasising the point of how good it would be,” Harrington said.
Within seven years the dream became reality with the first all-ticket Open and nearly a quarter of a million fans flocking to the links.
“You’re still a little bit nervous that you want it to be a success,” Harrington added. “We knew the crowds would turn out, obviously you have to get the logistics and make sure the crowds have a great time.
“I don’t think we could have anticipated how much, but maybe we should have. The players really loved it. Everybody who travelled in loved it.”
Never mind that McIlroy missed the cut, County Offaly’s Shane Lowry surged to a tumultuous six-shot victory. Tricolours flew triumphantly in loyalist marching season territory, amid unbridled sporting joy.
“We certainly have one of the best Open venues now in Royal Portrush,” Harrington reflected. He knows how much The Open means, regardless of which seaside venue holds the championship.
“You could travel 50 miles away from the course, and pull into a petrol station and the person behind the counter is likely to start talking to you about the Open Championship, actually likely to ask you if you have any tickets.
“You can often go to a tournament in the US, and half a mile down the road at a petrol station they don’t even know the event is on.
“Portrush is exceptional at taking ownership of the event, believing that it’s their Open and the community comes together for their Open and they make it very special.”
‘McIlroy could swan around and wave to crowds’
In a delicious twist, the return coincides with McIlroy ending his 11-year major drought by winning the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. The Northern Irishman is here wearing the coveted Green Jacket.
No further hype needed. “Yeah, poor Rory, everyone seems to build up the pressure on him being the favourite,” Harrington said.
“But if you want to be at that level the pressure’s always going to be on you.
“Clearly, he knows Portrush very well, he’ll have the support and there’s no doubt we’d love to see an Irish winner.”
But Harrington says McIlroy should maintain some perspective for what could otherwise be an overwhelming week.
“Him going with the Masters’ jacket, I think it’s enough for him to just swan around and wave to the crowds,” said the three-time major winner.
“He doesn’t have to win. The people always want him to win the next major or whatever, but it doesn’t have to be this one.
“I know it would be nice to be Portrush, but he’ll win plenty more majors.”
Regardless of whether Portrush can serve up another domestic fairytale, this will remain a golden period for golf on the island of Ireland. How does Harrington think the sport’s historians will reflect on it in years to come?
“Clearly it’s been unprecedented,” he said. “There’s been a lot of ‘how did we do it?’ You know, I don’t know if you can replicate things like that.
“Everybody’s been trying to find the formula, did we have something special in Ireland? I’m not sure.
“We gained some momentum. We did our thing. I think it’s good for us going forward that we will have players who will believe in themselves.”
They will do so while speculation grows that new ground will be broken by the R&A taking a future Open to Portmarnock in the the Republic of Ireland.
It is another indicator of how far and how quickly golf in this part of the world has moved. “Definitely, that’s a big step,” Harrington said.
“It’s tried for a long time to lose the tag as the British Open; it’s The Open,” Harrington said.
“And it represents everybody, not just the people in Britain, but it represents everybody around the world who plays golf.
Related topics
- Golf
12-foot trampoline that’s ‘a hit with the whole family’ hits sale ahead of summer holidays
Keep the whole family active this summer with a 12-foot trampoline that’s sure to keep kids entertained while reducing screen time through the summer break – and right now it’s on sale
Keeping kids occupied through the long school holidays can be tough, especially if you don’t have the time or income to be able to take them on days out multiple times a week. And thanks to Netflix’s hit show Adolescence, parents are more cautious than ever to encourage prolonged screen time. So what’s the best way to keep children (and adults) active, entertained and off their computers? A trampoline.
A classic staple in many family gardens, this 12-foot trampoline has been praised by shoppers as “a hit with the whole family” and a “great way to keep everyone active”. Normally retailing for a steep £308.89, this must-have trampoline has just landed on Amazon’s limited-time sale, just in time for the summer holidays.
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This 3.66m (12ft) SereneLife trampoline has a total assembled size of 366 cm x 366 cm x 270 cm (144.0’’ x 144.0’’ x 106.3’’), offering ample space for endless jumping fun. It is a top choice for kids, teens, and even adults. Whether you’re keeping your children entertained while doing some exercise or hosting playdates in your backyard, this trampoline is sure to be a winner with all age groups.
This trampoline features a long-lasting, high-quality reinforced polypropylene jumping mat and a heavy-duty, engineered galvanised metal frame, designed to withstand extended use and last a lifetime, ensuring safety no matter who is using it. It’s lab-tested and safety-certified, so you can trust that this trampoline’s high weight capacity provides outdoor fun and exercise for ages three and up, without the need to worry. It also boasts a waterproof and weather-resistant construction that promises to withstand humid and wet weather, making it ideal for the ever-changing UK climate.
This trampoline has been designed with your kids’ safety in mind. It comes equipped with a tall, protective safety net cage to prevent accidental tumbles over the side. It’s also armed with a stable platform base that makes it super stable, whether it’s placed on the driveway or garden.
Normally retailing for £308.89, shoppers can currently pick up this 12-foot trampoline on Amazon for the reduced price of £262.55, saving shoppers £46.45. For alternative models, Argos is offering this 12ft Sportspower Kids Trampoline with Enclosure for £170, while TP Toys has this TP Up 12ft Trampoline for £179.99, down from £259.99.
Amazon customers who have bought this jumping gem can’t stop praising it, as it amasses plenty of 5-star reviews. One thrilled buyer beams: “We picked up the SereneLife trampoline for the garden and it’s been a hit. Whether it’s kids burning off energy or adults pretending they’re “testing it,” it holds up really well. At this price point, I think it offers good value. It’s safe, sturdy, and fun, which is everything you want in a family trampoline. Great for keeping everyone moving without having to leave the garden.”
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Another shopper says: “This trampoline has been a real improvement for our garden! The children absolutely love it. It has encouraged them to spend more time outdoors.”
Robbie Williams gives heartbreaking update on mum’s dementia after shock diagnosis
Take That star, Robbie Williams, has opened up about his beloved mum Janet’s dementia decline as he heartbreakingly admitted he ‘isn’t ready for it’
Robbie Williams has given a heartbreaking update on his mum’s health following her dementia diagnosis last year. The Take That star, 51, revealed Janet was diagnosed with the disease in November, and has now, sadly, admitted that she no longer recognises her superstar son.
Dad-of-three, Robbie, spoke candidly about Janet’s health battle during a recent concert while on tour in Germany as he conceded he ‘wasn’t ready for it’. He also discussed his dad Pete’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, explaining that he can no longer leave the house after previously admitting he was fighting “fear and panic” over the situation.
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As per The Sun, Robbie revealed that his mum “doesn’t know who I am anymore”, sharing: “My mother has dementia and she doesn’t know who I am anymore. She doesn’t know where she is anymore.”
He continued: “My dad has Parkinson’s and he can’t leave the house. He used to sing with me every night on stage, he would come out, steal the show and be charming and then wander backstage for a glass of red wine. Now he can’t leave the house.”
Robbie also revealed his wife Ayda’s mum is also battling ill health, saying that she was sadly suffering from lupus, Parkinson’s and cancer.
Speaking about the reality of his mum’s journey ahead, Robbie concluded: “It’s a strange place to be” before admitting “I’m not ready for it”.
Towards the end of last year, Robbie told The Mirror that he “didn’t know” how to cope with the “incredibly complicated” situation.
He said: “The truth is that I’m very busy and I’m not dealing with the situation as I should. I don’t really know how to do it, it’s an incredibly complicated thing.”
He continued: “But I prefer not to go into details, You know, if I say something, they might read it, and then I would have to answer a lot of questions.”
“Let’s put it this way: we are all human beings, with our difficulties, and I am trying to deal with mine.”
Robbie’s biopic, Better Man, features themes of familial love and loss, and touches on his relationship with his late grandmother, who also had dementia.
Speaking to Hello! about his family’s plight, he explained: “My mum’s currently got dementia – like my nan in the film – and my dad’s got Parkinson’s and can’t get out of bed. So I’m in a different part of my life right now.”
Back in 2020 Robbie revealed his dad Pete had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, admitting at the time that he was fighting “fear and panic” over the situation.
He told us that receiving the diagnosis during Covid made things twice as hard as he, wife, Ayda, and their children were self-isolating thousands of miles away from his parents in Los Angeles.
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Robbie’s parents split in 1977. They also share daughter Sally, who is 11 years Robbie’s senior.
* More information and advice about Alzheimer’s can be found at the Alzheimer’s Society