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BBC presenter George Alagiah has died at the age of 67, after nearly a decade of living with bowel cancer. The newsreader was first diagnosed in 2014. He underwent several rounds of treatment after the cancer returned and spread over the last few years. In a statement, his agent Mary Greenham said: “George fought until the bitter end but sadly that battle ended earlier today. George was deeply loved by everybody who knew him, whether it was a friend, a colleague or a member of the public. “He simply was a wonderful human being. My thoughts are with Fran, the boys and his wider family.” Earlier this year, Alagiah opened up about a symptom he wished he had caught earlier. He was taking part in an NHS campaign to encourage the wider public to take up its bowel cancer screening program. He urged people who have received a free test kit from the health service “not to ignore it” because it “could save your life”. “Had I been screened, I could have been picked up. I would have been screened at least three times and possibly four by the time I was 58 and this would have been caught at the stage of a little polyp: snip, snip,” he said at the time. Alagiah received his diagnosis after complaining of blood in his stools. He underwent 17 rounds of chemotherapy and five operations to treat the disease, which eventually spread to his liver and lymph nodes. He supported a campaign by Bowel Cancer UK and Beating Bowel Cancer to make cancer screening available to everyone in England from the age of 50. Currently, screening is available to everyone aged 60 to 74, but the NHS is expanding to include everyone aged 50 to 59 years old. Around 42,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK, with 90 per cent of diagnoses made in people over the age of 50. It the fourth most common cancer and the second biggest cancer killer, leading to around 16,800 deaths every year. The three main symptoms of bowel cancer include having persistent blood in the stools; an ondoing change in bowel habits, such as needing to go more often or having diarrhoea; and persistent lower abdominal pain, bloating or discomfort. Some patients may also experience a loss of appetite, or significant, unintentional weight loss. According to Cancer Research UK, another potential symptom is tenesmus, which is the feeling of having to defecate without having stools, or experiencing pain upon defecation. Studies have found that several factors could potentially increase the risk of bowel cancer, although they cannot explain every case. These include a diet high in red or processed meats and low in fibre; being overweight or obese; not exercising often enough; and drinking too much alcohol. Smoking and having a family history of the disease can also increase the risk. Some people with long-term conditions like extensive ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease may also have an increased risk of bowel cancer. Bowel cancer can be treated with surgery, which may be paired with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or biological treatments. Catching the cancer at an early stage greatly improves chances of survival. However, the NHS states that if a cancerous tumour cannot be removed completely through surgery, then a cure may not be possible. For more information about treatment for bowel cancer, visit the NHS here and Cancer Research UK here. To speak to a Cancer Research UK nurse, you can call 0808 800 4040. The helpline is free and open from Monday to Friday, from 9am until 5pm. Additional reporting by PA Read More George Alagiah death: BBC newsreader dies aged 67 after bowel cancer diagnosis ‘One of the best and bravest’: George Alagiah obituary as long-serving BBC newsreader passes away ‘It’s not the doom and gloom you might think’: Jonnie Irwin details experience with palliative hospice care

BBC newsreader George Alagiah has died at 67 after being diagnosed with bowel cancer. Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and leads to around 16,800 deaths every year. More than nine out of 10 cases of bowel cancer develop in older adults over the age of 50, and nearly six in 10 are in people aged 70 or older. Alagiah was first diagnosed with stage four (advanced) bowel cancer in 2014. By the age of 66, it had spread to his lungs, liver, spine and lymph nodes. The three main symptoms of bowel cancer are having persistent blood in the stools, an ongoing change in bowel habit (such as needing to go more often or suffering the runs) and persistent lower abdominal pain, bloating or discomfort. A loss of appetite may also occur, or somebody may suffer significant, unintentional weight loss. Several things are known to increase the risk of bowel cancer, though they cannot explain every case. These include a diet high in red or processed meats and low in fibre, being overweight or obese, not taking enough exercise and drinking too much alcohol. Being a smoker and having a family history of the disease can also push up the risk. Some people also have an increased risk of bowel cancer because they have another long-term condition, such as extensive ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. Bowel cancer screening is currently widely offered to people aged 60 to 74 who are sent a home stool kit every two years. Those aged 75 and over can ask for a kit every two years by phoning the free bowel cancer screening helpline on 0800 707 60 60. Bowel cancer can be very difficult to treat in its later stages. But in the early stages, tumours can often be removed through surgery. The main treatments for bowel cancer include chemotherapy, radiotherapy and targeted drugs, which depend on the genetic make-up of the tumour. One in 15 men and one in 18 women will be diagnosed with bowel cancer during their lifetime. Expert predictions are that 53,646 cases of bowel cancer (29,356 in men and 24,290 in women) will be diagnosed in the UK in 2035. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Carol Vorderman says she no longer sunbathes after health scare Carol Vorderman: Why my skin cancer scare means I no longer sunbathe This is how often you should actually change your razor

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'Barbie' broke records at the box office, Brian Harman won the British Open, Twitter is now X and more in the Roundup.

A midsummer quiz: Let’s say you read about an area experiencing blistering heat for weeks on end. Heat

X most certainly marks the spot for the world’s most headline-grabbing billionaire. Elon Musk announced on Sunday that he would be giving Twitter a major makeover: changing its name to “X” and doing away with its famous bird logo. He tweeted (or should that be X-ed?): “Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” And, he said: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow. To embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s all part of his overarching plan to transform X into an “everything app”, much like China’s WeChat, which handles everything from payments to messaging to micro-blogging. Posting a beaming photo of himself with his arms raised in a cross, Musk added: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it away, but I like the letter X.” So where does his love of the letter come from? And where else has he used it? Here, indy100 takes a look at the SpaceX founder’s somewhat unorthodoX obsession. X.com When it comes to letters of the alphabet, X is certainly the most associated with euphemism – anything branded X-rated is bound to raise an eyebrow or two. And this is quite possibly one of the reasons the proud provocateur liked it so much to begin with. According to Ashlee Vance, author of the 2015 biography ‘Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future’, his fascination with the letter began with one of his earliest ventures. Musk, one of the world's richest men, co-founded the online banking service X.com in 1999, but, Vance said, not everyone was enthusiastic about the name. "Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it," he revealed. However, the critics were soon able to breathe a sigh of relief: X.com merged with competitor Confinity Inc., in 2000 and the name was changed to the family-friendly PayPal. And yet, Musk clearly wasn’t able to let go of his brainchild. So, in 2017, he bought the url "X.com" back off PayPal, tweeting that the domain "has great sentimental value,” as NPR notes. Now, if you type “X.com” into your web browser, you will be directed to the Twitter – soon to be X – homepage. SpaceX After making his first fortune with the sale of his tech company Zip2 for $307 million (around £240 million) in 1999, and PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion (around £1.32 billion), the universe was the limit for Musk. The same year he sold PayPal, he founded his space flight company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. However, the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so it was abbreviated to SpaceX. The Tesla ‘X’ While Musk opted for three alternative consonants in the name of his electric car company (which he started in 2003), he eventually couldn’t resist adding a touch of X. In 2015, the father-of-six unveiled Tesla’s third model: an e-car lovingly named… you guessed it. Tim Higgins, author of ‘Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century’, explained that Musk had cheeky intentions when choosing the names of his models. The idea was that, combined, they would spell out the word “sexy," Higgins said. However, another car company – Ford – threw a spanner in the works thanks to its ownership of the rights to the “E” model. Musk, therefore, had to settle on calling his second model “3” – a "kind of a backwards E," as Higgins pointed out – to semi-achieve his desired acronym. But yes, there are now S, 3, X and Y models of the cars. Baby names In 2020, Musk and his then-partner, Grimes, welcomed a baby boy, calling him X Æ A-12. However, the couple were forced to alter the spelling of the name to X AE A-XII, after being notified that it breached legal conventions. California law dictates that names on birth certificates must employ “the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language,” although apostrophes and dashes are allowed, NME reports. Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, explained via tweet that the X part of her son’s name refers to the “unknown variable” in algebra. Meanwhile, the Æ refers to the “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)," and the A-12 at the end is apparently a nod to the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft — the couple’s “favourite” plane. Despite all of this, the pair – who are now separated – refer to their child simply as “Little X”, Boucher admitted in an interview with Bloomberg shortly after his birth. Two years later, the then-couple announced that they’d had a baby girl via surrogate, naming her Exa Dark Sideræl. However, earlier this year, Boucher confirmed that they’d changed her name to “Y” – yet again proving that single letters at the bottom of the alphabet really are Musk’s thing. xAI On 12 July this year, the 52-year-old announced the formation of a new company called xAI. It's goal is simple, according to its website: "To understand the true nature of the universe." The new startup, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has hired a group of top AI researchers who formerly worked at OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Tesla. But we don't know much more about it than that. Musk was a co-founder and early funder of the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI. However, he's grown increasingly critical of the company as it’s gained global prominence and commercial success with last year’s release of ChatGPT. In April, the billionaire criticised ChatGPT in an interview with Tucker Carlson, telling the then-Fox News host that the chatbot had a liberal bias and that he planned an alternative that would be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.” And... voilà xAI. What neXt? It’s time for the renaissance of X.com, but with a grand new purpose. Weeks before forking out the $44 billion (around £34 million) to buy Twitter in October, Musk tweeted that the eye-watering purchase was simply “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app". "He wants to create an app similar to how WeChat is used in China, where it's part of the fabric of day-to-day life,” the billionaire’s biographer Vance explained to NPR. “You use it to communicate, to consume news, to buy things, to pay your rent, to book appointments with your doctor and even to pay fines.” Hinting at the financial difficulties that have plagued Twitter both historically and since Musk’s acquisition, Vance pointed out: "The company clearly needs a new, bigger business if it's to make the type of money that would justify his investment and satisfy his ambition.” Indeed, the world-famous entrepreneur is doing everything he can to build the hype around his company’s new facelift. On Monday (24 July), he retweeted a message from his newly-appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, which read: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square." She continued: “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” So… why X? Musk suggested that he’d chosen “X” to replace Twitter because he wanted something that “embod[ies] the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. The letter has a number of different spiritual, cultural and mathematical meanings – any, or all, of which may have informed his lifelong fascination with the letter. As Boucher noted in her baby name explanation, X connotes the “unknown variable” in algebra. It is, of course, also the symbol for multiplication, and in linguistics, it’s what’s known a “phonetic chameleon” – meaning that it’s used to replicate a number of different sounds. It is also known as signifying the end of something – or death – think the X in a skull and crossbones emblem or the crosses drawn on the eyes of the dead in cartoons. It also signifies an error or cancellation, or that which is negative, and has long been recognised as an occult symbol for Satan. In other words, it has become the most “nihilistic” of letters, as psychologist Leon F Seltzer pointed out in a piece for Psychology Today. This all goes to suggest that Musk appreciates X’s malleability – how it can be birth and death, cancellation and multiplication, nothing and everything. X.com is dead. Long live X.com. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

An overview of the media in Ivory Coast, including links to broadcasters and newspapers.

As they prepare to go on tour as a five-piece, S Club has revealed their first single in 20 years is titled ‘These are the Days’, which will come with a “moving film story” in tribute to their late bandmate Paul Cattermole.

A woman who turned to roleplaying with hyper-realistic dolls “to help (her) cope” with the death of her first baby – and continues to do so with her husband and two rainbow babies – has said her husband’s parents disapproved of the hobby and fired him from the family business as a result. Christina Keeler, 38, a stay-at-home mum and YouTuber, from Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, USA, fell pregnant with her first “miracle” baby in 2015, despite having endometriosis and being told she would not be able to conceive in her 20s. She suffered a miscarriage, but after watching a documentary about so-called reborn dolls, she had a “lightbulb moment” and realised getting a hyper-realistic doll would be the “perfect solution”. Christina’s husband Bill, 43, was “hesitant” at first but became supportive after he saw how much it “helped (her) grief”. The couple went on to have two “miracle” daughters, Grace, six, and Joy, four, who now help feed, change and dress the family’s five reborn dolls – which cost between £1,560 and £3,899 each – in their “nursery” complete with “a crib and a wardrobe”. The family often take the dolls out in public, and have shared their journey on YouTube – where Christina documents people’s reactions to her dolls and birthing videos. Some silicone dolls come in a fake womb which allows a Caesarean section to be performed at home. But Bill’s family were “disgusted” with the hobby, to the point where they gave him a choice to stop having the dolls or leave the family business. He refused to shut down the YouTube channel and did not want Christina to give up her hobby, so he was fired. She fell pregnant with her first baby in 2015, a year after her mother died of cancer. The couple were “elated” about the pregnancy because Christina had been told in her twenties that she would not be able to conceive because she has endometriosis, but she miscarried at eight weeks. Christina told PA Real Life: “When we lost the baby it was so devastating, I remember lying in the hospital bed after they had taken the baby out of my belly, and screaming for my mum and wept wanting to cuddle my baby.” She “really struggled” with the grief of losing her mother and her baby so close together. She explained: “This feeling of sorrow just never went away, it was so painful that I never talked about it again.” Despite having her two “miracle” children Grace and Joy, Christina still longed to hold her first baby, and after watching a documentary about reborn dolls, she wanted to get one to see if it would help her grief. She said: “I felt so blessed to have two healthy girls, but that feeling of missing the first baby never quite went away. “When my youngest was around two years old, my husband and I came across a documentary about reborn dolls. “And he was like, ‘That’s really weird’, and I played it off that I thought the same, but actually I really wanted one to help me cope and I thought it would be the perfect solution.” After persuading her husband, Christina ordered her first lifelike doll, Hannah, costing her around £155. She said: “I told my husband and he was not on board at all, he was hesitant, but after explaining my reasoning, he was much more understanding and more accepting.” When the doll arrived, Christina instantly felt like it helped with her mourning. She said: “It helped me therapeutically because for the first time ever when I got my first reborn doll, I was able to talk about the loss of our baby. “And since then I have healed tremendously from that loss because I’m able to talk about it and share my story and help others – it helped my grief, for sure.” Christina now has a collection of five dolls called Carter, Cadence, Quinn, Isabella and Sammy, which she loves to dress, cuddle and feed. She takes the dolls out in public and people often mistake them for real babies. She said: “We have a nursery for them with a crib and a wardrobe. I check on them throughout the day, and on other days, especially when the girls want to get involved, I pick out an outfit for them, bring them to breakfast, get them to feed them a bottle, change them. “If we’re running errands we often take them out with us and put them in a car seat and stroller.” Christina and her family have been sharing their experiences on YouTube, where they are known as The Reborn Family. She said: “I make videos about people’s reactions to my dolls, as well as vlogs and birthing videos – I have some silicone reborn dolls which come in a womb and you perform a C-section on it at home, to give birth to the baby.” Despite her immediate family being supportive of the hobby, Christina admits not everyone in her wider family understands. She said: “My husband’s family were, and still are, disapproving of the reborns, even though they can see how much they helped me. They were disgusted. “We moved from California to Pennsylvania because my husband was next in line to take over the family business because they were about to retire, and they asked if we would like to do so and we agreed. “When they were on vacation they came across our YouTube channel, and they called us up and they were mortified and so embarrassed, and said we were ruining the family name.” When Bill’s parents came home, they gave him an ultimatum to stop having the dolls. Christina explained: “Bill said that he was not going to quit his job, and didn’t want me to stop having reborns because they were so therapeutic for me at the time, and his dad said, ‘Well, then you’re fired’.” My husband’s family were disgusted, they said we were ruining the family name Bill’s father was contacted by PA Real Life for comment, but he had not responded at the time of publication. Even though her reborns have caused tension in the family, Christina cannot see herself giving up her hobby any time soon. She said: “Reborns continue to help me with my grief, and I love sharing content with other people who have lost babies, and they can also really help people with dementia, people who are infertile, people with anxiety and depression, I wouldn’t want to stop this.” Read More Teenager who thought she was pregnant diagnosed with ovarian cancer Woman praised for response to parents who asked her to swap first class seat with their child Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Greta Gerwig makes history with biggest box office opening for a female director Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Apple Inc. is asking suppliers to produce about 85 million units of the iPhone 15 this year, roughly