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‘I loved selling ice-cream there’: the 13-year battle for a Mr Whippy pitch in Greenwich

Family of Paul St Hilaire Sr to take council to high court next month to reinstate van on King William Walk

When he was growing up, Paul St Hilaire Jr thought his dad was the next best thing to Willy Wonka: no one else’s dad sold ice-cream for a living.

“I remember sitting in the van, eating my Mr Whippy and feeling superior to children queueing up outside,” St Hilaire Jr remembered.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:00:08 GMT
Euro 2025 power rankings: Spain reign but France and England impress too

Montse Tomé’s side remain the favourites after a superb group-stage showing but Iceland go home with a whimper

Spain were favourites coming into the Euros and, based on their form in Group B, they still are. They matched England’s Euro 2022 record of 14 goals in the group stage. Alexia Putellas is continuing her charge for the Ballon d’Or with three goals and four assists and has lit up their midfield while the 18-year-old Vicky López has impressed in her first major tournament. While in sensational form going forward, their defence does leave opportunities for their opposition. Montse Tomé’s side will be favourites to win the quarter-final against hosts Switzerland but it will be a mouth-watering occasion in Bern.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:33:47 GMT
Measles cases are surging in Europe and the US. This is what the anti-vax conspiracy theory has brought us

Nearly 30 years after Andrew Wakefield’s discredited study linking the MMR vaccine and autism, we badly need an injection of rationality

It’s easy to say in hindsight, but also true, that even when the anti-vax movement was in its infancy in the late 90s before I had kids, let alone knew what you were supposed to vaccinate them against, I could smell absolute garbage. After all, Andrew Wakefield, a doctor until he was struck off in 2010, was not the first crank to dispute the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines. There was a movement against the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine in the 1970s in the UK, and a similar one in the US in the early 1980s. The discovery of vaccination in the first place was not without its critics, and enough people to form a league opposed the smallpox rollout in the early 1800s on the basis that it was unchristian to share tissue with an animal.

So Wakefield’s infamous Lancet study, in which he claimed a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, going as far as to pin down the exact mechanism by which one led to the other, was new only in so far as it had all the branding of reputable research, when in fact it was maleficent woo-woo, a phenomenon as old as knowledge. It was noticeable, though, that it fell on parched ground – a lot of people were very keen for it to be true. That was partly simple news appetite: vaccines are inherently boring. Devised by humans co-operating with one another, motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire to help the species – and indiscriminately, no one baby more worthy of protection than any other – there is no animating conflict here, nothing hidden, no complexity. Is there anything more tedious than humanity at its finest? So wouldn’t it be at least piquant if it turned out to be a giant mistake?

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:12:20 GMT
Musk’s giant Tesla factory casts shadow on lives in a quiet corner of Germany

Politics of carmaker’s owner has soured sentiments in Grünheide, south-east of Berlin, where the factory promised jobs and revitalisation

When Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer – who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla’s European production hub – wrote to the state premier to complain.

“How can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?” she asked Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat leader of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who had backed the setting up of the Tesla Giga factory in Grünheide.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:14:40 GMT
‘They digest externally’: the artist who creates paintings with live flies

For over a decade, John Knuth has created art using the regurgitation of flies and after he lost his home in the California wildfires, his work has a new perspective

One morning in Denver as artist John Knuth was getting his exhibition ready at the David B Smith Gallery, the police knocked on the door to check he wasn’t housing a dead body. “They said, ‘We’ve got a report of a lot of flies in here. Is there a dead body or anything rotting?’” Knuth recalls to the Guardian over Zoom.

The hundreds of flies emerging from Knuth’s gallery were actually his collaborators. For over a decade, Knuth has been creating paintings using the regurgitation of tens of thousands of flies. “When flies eat they digest externally,” explains Knuth. “They’re in a constant state of regurgitation. They land on a surface, puke up, suck it back in. Puke up, suck it back in.” After feeding the insects a mixture of acrylic colored paint and sugar water, the flies spend several weeks expelling the mixtures on to his canvases. “From that I get these really transcendent color connections.”

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:12:33 GMT
Constance Marten and Mark Gordon convicted over daughter’s death

Pair found guilty of manslaughter of newborn baby, who died after they went on run to evade social services

Two parents have been found guilty of the manslaughter of their newborn daughter, who died after they took her to live in a tent in freezing wintry conditions to evade social services.

Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, who had had their first four children taken into care, went on the run with their fifth, a baby girl named Victoria, shortly after her birth in December 2022.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:34:43 GMT
Trump does deal with Nato allies to arm Ukraine and warns Russia of severe sanctions

US president says he will supply Kyiv with billions of dollars of military equipment paid for by European allies

Donald Trump has said he has sealed an agreement with Nato allies which will lead to large-scale arms deliveries to Ukraine, including Patriot missiles, and warned Russia that it will face severe sanctions if Moscow does not make peace within 50 days.

After a meeting with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, Trump said they had agreed “a very big deal”, in which “billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment is going to be purchased from the United States, going to Nato … And that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:24:19 GMT
Israel’s military and political leadership clash over proposed camp for Palestinians

Controversial Gaza ‘humanitarian city’ plan, likened to a concentration camp by a former Israeli PM, is hampering ceasefire talks with Hamas

A feud has broken between the Israeli government and the military over the cost and impact of a planned camp for Palestinians in southern Gaza, as politicians criticised the former prime minister Ehud Olmert for warning that the project would create a “concentration camp” if it goes ahead.

The “humanitarian city” project has become a sticking point in ceasefire talks with Hamas. Israel wants to keep troops stationed across significant parts of Gaza, including the ruins of Rafah city in the south, where the defence minister, Israel Katz, says the camp will be built.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:24:41 GMT
Resident doctors’ strikes would be gift to Nigel Farage, warns Wes Streeting

Exclusive: Labour fighting for survival of NHS, health secretary tells MPs as he prepares to meet BMA

Wes Streeting has said resident doctors’ strikes would be “a gift to Nigel Farage” before a meeting with the British Medical Association this week where he will seek to avert industrial action.

The health secretary told a meeting of Labour MPs on Monday that ministers were “in the fight for the survival of the NHS” and if Labour failed, Farage would argue for it to be replaced by an insurance-style system.

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Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:00:24 GMT

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