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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

The video allegedly included 'selectively edited snippets and debunked videos' from Tristan Tate’s past

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

'And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,' Elon Musk previously tweeted

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.

Quentin Tarantino wants to give a befitting farewell to the acting career of Bruce Willis, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia

To throw groupies and obsessed fans off the scent when checking into hotels, Liam Gallagher called himself Lou Cypher during Oasis tours.

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.

Barbie and Oppenheimer did so well at the box office at their opening weekend that Vue International reported its biggest weekend for UK cinema ticket sales since before the pandemic. On Sunday, the cinema chain said a fifth of its customers had bought tickets to see both films in a double bill. More than 2,000 of Vue’s screenings for Barbie were sold out, according to the company. The company said the comedy drama Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, would exceed ticket sales for Super Mario Bros and expected Oppenheimer to become the biggest film of the year. Tim Richards, chief executive and founder of Vue International, said: “Vue saw its highest weekend admissions since Avengers: Endgame in 2019 with the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, proving that when the movies are there our customers will come to watch them on the big screen. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Barbie is tracking to become the biggest film of 2023 and has a good chance of getting into the Top 10 highest grossing films of all time. “It is an incredibly exciting moment for the industry, and we expect this trend to continue for the coming weeks.” In total, the cinema chain had more than 4,000 sell-out sessions across the country for both films. Meanwhile, Odeon reported on Thursday that more than 200,000 advance tickets had been bought and more than 10,000 guests were expected to see both films during the opening weekend. Universal Pictures said Oppenheimer had made £8.05m in the UK and Ireland since Friday. They said the biopic is on track to have a better opening three days than Nolan’s other blockbusters Dunkirk, Interstellar and Inception. 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.

'Idiots hate this Jason Aldean song because they hate when we push back against violence,' Ted Nugent said

Doja Cat is facing a backlash after speaking out about the practice of pop stars’ obsessive fan bases using collective nicknames to describe themselves. Taylor Swift has the "Swifties", Ariana Grande has the "Arianators" and Lady Gaga has the "Little Monsters". And until recently, Doja Cat had the "Kittenz". However, in a now-deleted post on social media platform Threads, the pop star said: “My fans don’t name themselves s***. If you call yourself a ‘kitten’ or f***ing ‘kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.” The backlash was strong and immediate, in the latest instance of hordes of devoted fans getting just a teensy bit too invested in what musicians say and do. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter One of her fan accounts, The Kittenz Web, said: “Just delete the entire account and rethink everything. It’s never too late.” Another fan on Twitter said: “Imagine telling your fans to get a job when they are the ones that buy your music, merch and concert tickets.” Another asked on Threads if she could tell her fans that she loves them. Doja Cat replied: “I don’t though cuz I don’t even know y’all.” One fan hit back: “And we don’t know you. But we have supported you through thick and thin. Mind you, you’d be nothing without us.” But Doja wasn’t having it. She said: “Nobody forced you. IDK why you’re talking to me like you’re my mother... You sound like a crazy person.” The singer eventually deleted her account on the platform following the backlash. It’s not the first time 27-year-old Doja Cat, whose real name is Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, has been forced to stand up for herself in the face of fanatical social media followers. She was previously accused of blocking people who weighed in on her relationship with Twitch streamer J Cyrus. “I DONT GIVE A F**K WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE,” she wrote on Instagram. “I NEVER HAVE AND NEVER WILL GIVE A F**K WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ME OR MY PERSONAL LIFE.” Meanwhile Doja Cat fan pages like Doja HQ, The Kittens Room and Doja Cat News have all deactivated their accounts since the most recent incident. The Grammy award winning musician is expected to release her fourth studio album later this year. According to reports, that will likely steer away from the pop music she has previously released and draw more from hip-hop and R&B. 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.

Russian schoolchildren are to be taught the basics of operating combat drones as part of a push by Vladimir Putin to "cultivate a culture of militarised patriotism", the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. In its latest intelligence update, the MoD said the lessons will include "how to conduct terrain reconnaissance and ways to counter enemy uncrewed aerial vehicles" as part of a revised "Basics of Life Safety syllabus" for year 10 and 11 students to be taught from September. The syllabus also includes assault rifle training, hand grenade skills and combat first aid. It comes as the Russian Defence Ministry claimed to have intercepted and destroyed two drones in Moscow in the early hours, with reports that their fragments were found about a mile from the ministry’s building. Russia, as ever, has blamed Ukraine for the attack – although Kyiv is remaning silent on the matter. Moscow has faced a number of such attacks in recent months, an embarrassment for the Kremlin, despite it using such incidents to try and build support for its invasion among Russian citizens Read More Ukraine’s ambassador to UK sacked after Zelensky ‘sarcasm’ row Why Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s ports matter for us all Russian pro-war Putin critic Igor Girkin facing charges of inciting extremism in latest Kremlin crackdown Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s fuel margins have more than doubled since start of Ukraine war