Author: Gulf News Week
BIIRD had never played together when they stepped on stage in Trafalgar Square to face 10,000 people on St Patrick’s Day 2024.Eleven Irish traditional musicians stood side-by-side in elaborate costumes, some meeting for the first time only hours before the performance.Two years later, the all-female supergroup has sold out venues across the UK and Ireland, toured stadiums with Ed Sheeran, and built a global following – all without releasing a debut record.Their rise has been rapid, driven almost entirely by the strength of their live performances and word of mouth.For singer and flautist Miadhachlughain O’Donnell, from County Down, the scale…
Ahead of the first episode of Saturday Night Live UK, we asked whether the show could make us laugh.Many were sceptical about whether the 50-year-old US sketch-comedy variety show would translate for a British audience.As its eight-week run comes to a close, with guest-hosting duties performed by the likes of Hannah Waddingham, Jamie Dornan and Aimee Lou Wood, the consensus from fans and critics is, yes, it has made us laugh – but there are caveats.The final episode of the series, hosted by Sex Education and Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa, was one of the strongest when it came to…
The glass-paned office building perched above a ramen store in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown looked inconspicuous on a busy block of Chinese restaurants, grocery stores and apartments.In 2022, Lu Jianwang, the 64-year-old president of a Chinese community group, set up shop on one of the floors, creating a space where his attorneys said he planned to help expats renew their driver’s licences and play ping pong on a table in a conference room.But it was not long before the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the space, and accused Lu of taking orders from the Chinese government to establish the…
Israel’s attacks on Doha in September and Tehran in February demonstrated a new capability that may make warfare more unpredictable.On September 9, 2025, Israel struck Qatar. There was no battlefield, no front line. Instead, the target was a sovereign state hosting negotiations that Israel itself was involved in. When the missile hit Doha, it set a dangerous precedent.That same strike architecture reappeared on February 28, at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, when the compound of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was targeted in Tehran.In both cases, Israeli aircraft remained outside the target state’s airspace and released a…
Three people were killed overnight in a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow region, Russian officials have said.A woman died in a house in Khimki, north of the capital, where a person was trapped under rubble, regional governor Andrei Vorobiev said. A man and a woman were killed in the village of Pogorelki. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 12 people were injured in strikes on a city oil refinery. Russia’s military said 556 drones were intercepted.In Ukraine, eight people were injured in Russian drone attacks and shelling in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, officials said.In a post on Telegram early…
Bulgarian pop star Dara has won the Eurovision Song Contest with her pneumatic dance anthem Bangaranga.The 27-year-old topped both the public and the jury vote in a nail-biting conclusion, soaring ahead of Israel in second and Romania in third to score a massive 516 points.Dara was far from a front-runner going into the contest, but her intricate choreography and naggingly catchy chorus helped her eclipse the competition – giving Bulgaria its first ever Eurovison title. The UK, however, continued its run of disastrous results. Look Mum No Computer’s song Eins, Zwei, Drei took last place, with one solitary point from…
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency of international concern.The agency said the outbreak in DR Congo’s eastern Ituri province, which has seen around 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths reported, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency.But it warned it could potentially be “a much larger outbreak” than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant risk of local and regional spread.The current strain of Ebola is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, the health agency said, for which there are no approved drugs…
The UK’s relationship with the EU looks set to become an issue in both a possible Labour leadership contest and the coming by-election in the Makerfield constituency.Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, in his first public appearance since resigning from the cabinet, told an audience in London on Saturday that “leaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake”.At the Progress Conference, organised by the “Blairite” wing of the Labour Party, he announced he would contest a formal challenge to replace Sir Keir Starmer.Within an hour Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake seized on Streeting’s comment, saying “whilst Labour relitigate Brexit, Britain is…
Another year, another flop. The UK has self-destructed at Eurovision all over again.Look Mum No Computer, aka musician Sam Battle, got one solitary point, ending up in last place. It’s the third time we’ve been at the bottom of the table since 2020. We’ve made the top 10 once since 2010. This is the fourth consecutive year I’ve written a post-mortem on our failure.Believe me, I don’t want to be here – but here we are.But the musician gave it his all, stomping around the stage in a bright pink boiler suit while singing about quitting his office job so…
Lights, camera, Bangaranga: Highlights from EurovisionBulgarian singer Dara stormed to victory in the contest, while Ukraine broke the record for the longest note ever sung at Eurovision.39 mins agoEurope