The casting call featured a picture of Mallory Beach with the word 'FLOAT' written across her face in red ink

Singapore ride-hailing firm Grab Holdings said it is cutting over 1,000 jobs or 11% of its workforce to cut costs and keep the company competitive, in its biggest round of job cuts since the pandemic

By Nandita Bose WASHINGTON U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday will address the impact of federal budget cuts

Attorneys for a Wisconsin Native American tribe are set to present their arguments that a federal judge should order an energy company to shut down an oil pipeline because rapid erosion could expose it and cause a massive oil spill on reservation land

A man accused of killing one person and wounding five others in a shooting at a Southern California church luncheon last year has been charged with dozens of federal hate crimes in connection with the attack, which investigators say was motivated by political hatred of Taiwan

Industrial conglomerate Esmark says it has made an all-cash bid to buy U.S. Steel that values the iconic steelmaker at $7.8 billion

Tracey Emin has opened up about “totally accepting death” when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bladder cancer in 2020. In June 2020, visual artist Emin was diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently underwent a series of major surgeries, including a full hysterectomy, as well as the removal of her urethra, bladder, lymph nodes, and part of her vagina and intestine. In April 2021, she shared that the cancer was “gone” after the surgery. In a new interview with The Times, Emin, 60, explained that upon her diagnosis, she was told that there was no guarantee the surgery would be successful in removing the cancer. At the time of her diagnosis, Emin said that she had feared being “dead by Christmas”. As a result, the Turner Prize nominee explained: “I totally accepted death – absolutely, totally.” “I think accepting death on such a profound level was what’s kept me alive,” she said. “I thought, you know what? Death looks after itself. We all die – now I’ll look after living. “I realised that my life has never really been living. I’ve been just dying. I’ve been so nihilistic. I thought, this is gonna change – if I get through this I want to look forward to things and I want to be present.” Emin, 60, now has a stoma (an opening on the abdomen connected to the urinary system allowing waste to be diverted out of the body) and uses a urostomy bag, which she will need to use for the rest of her life. On International Women’s Day in March, Emin penned a powerful personal essay in The Independent about her relationship with her body after surgery. Here, the artist admitted that she “hated” her bag, “but most days I’m philosophical; knowing that it keeps me alive”. She recalled: “One of my greatest golden moments was when my entire bag came off in Chanel on Bond Street: a tsunami of p*** cascading down my body crashing to the champagne-carpeted floor. Everyone was lovely and understood, Chanel even sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.” For the article published in The Independent, Emin created an exclusive acrylic on canvas artwork, titled “Marriage to Myself”. She also shared a candid photograph of herself standing in front of a full-length mirror with her white urostomy bag visible. While Emin works almost exclusively in the paint medium now, in June she unveiled three bronze doors that she secretly worked on for the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery following a substantial £44m redevelopment. Etched in individual panels on the doors are 45 female faces, which Emin explained were inspired by facets of her “soul”. Emin said that her arrangement with the National Portrait Gallery was that she was not paid for the work (the gallery only paid the production fees), in exchange for total creative freedom. “It wasn’t a commission,” she explained. “I did it for free. I think the gallery wants to push the idea of portraiture in a different way. “There’s so many different ways to experience somebody’s, let’s say, soul. It doesn’t just have to be what they look like. It could be a portrait of the soul, for example. It could be lots of different things. So I think they wanted it to move away from the idea of classic portraiture. To stretch it.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is again calling on foreign governments with strong security forces to help Haiti fight a surge in gang violence

Offset encouraged Kai Cenat to try some ZaZa and the streamer, though initially reluctant, eventually obliged

By Brendan Pierson A Texas judge on Friday blocked a Republican-backed state law banning so-called gender-affirming care including

The two primary organizations behind Wednesday's protest were the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine

It was an extraordinarily public recruitment drive from an MI6 chief - an open invitation to senior officials in Russia’s security establishment to join those who have defected in disgust over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Sir Richard Moore wanted to send a direct message to officials and politicians in Moscow : “You know the address – come and talk to us… Our door is always open… Our loyalty to our agents is lifelong… our gratitude eternal… Their secrets will always be safe with us.” This was only the second public address by Sir Richard since he had taken over as ‘C’, and there was a reason why he chose Prague to raise this theme. It was crushing of the Prague Spring by Russian tanks 55 years ago which had led to a wave of Soviet officials crossing over to the West. There have been other defections since then. But security officers point out, these have been motivated, to a large extent, by other factors such as money, or general unhappiness, or clashes with colleagues. But the Ukraine war has seen a return to Russian officials agreeing to help Western services in numbers which one officer described as “ surprising but very, very welcome”. Sir Richard, speaking at the British embassy, said “Many Russians are wrestling with the same dilemmas and the same tugs of conscience as their predecessors did in 1968. “I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 monthsand join hands with us. We will handle their offers of help with the discretion and professionalism for which our service is famed.” People in the Kremlin hierarchy have seen Putin’s position become progressively weak, Sir Richard wanted to point out. The fact that Yevgeny Prigozhin is still free and moving around despite marching on Moscow to carry out a coup was an astonishing example of this. “Just remember, in the morning of the coup Prigozhin was a traitor. By the evening he had been pardoned, two days later he was having tea with Putin”, said the head of MI6.” A security official added later: “And of course it was not tea with polonium which is something enemies of President Putin could have expected in the past, but now Putin is in no position to do that.” Ukrainian military and intelligence officials have claimed that they have received information from the Kremlin via Western intelligence services enabling them to carry out attacks inside Russia. Sir Richard would not be drawn on what role his or other British services may have played in this. He wanted to stress, however, that many in Moscow’s security apparatus shared Prigozhin’s scathing assessment of what had unfolded in Ukraine. “One architect of that onslaught, Yevgeny Prigozhin, demolished the whole charade in a single sentence when he said, and I quote Prigozhin’s own words. ‘The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star….The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war. The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘it’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.”’ The fact remains, however, that Putin’s Russia has global allies helping in Ukraine. Moore said “Some nations have reduced themselves to being accomplices of the aggressor. Iran’s decision to supply Russia with the suicide drones that mete out random destruction to Ukraine’s cities has provoked internal quarrels at the highest level of the regime in Tehran. And so it should, because that decision was unconscionable. Iran seeks cash by selling arms to Russia to enable them to kill Ukrainian civilians.” Wagner is no longer active in Ukraine, but its widespread and lucrative operations in Africa have continued. The regimes dealing with them in the continent will, in the long run, suffer, Sir Richard held. Russia is “hawking mercenaries around Africa”, and in nations suffering from civil war, poverty and collapsed infrastructure, Moscow is “offering a 21st Century version of a Faustian pact.” But the regimes which welcomed Wagner are at risk. “Now they’ve had to watch the very mercenaries who they are supposed to trust with their livesturning against their ultimate patron, Vladimir Putin, and bearing down on Moscow. If Russian mercenaries can betray Putin, who else might they betray?” Russia has sought ever closer ties with China as international sanctions have begun to bite. But that has come at a cost, China is emerging as the senior partner in the relationship. Sir Richard ended on his theme of redemption of Russians by rejecting Vladimir Putin and his war of aggression. “ They are watching in horror as their soldiers ravage a kindred country. They know in their hearts that Putin’s case for attacking a fellow Slavic nation is fraudulent, a miasma of lies and fantasy. The message to them is “ our door is always open.” Read More Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin ‘clearly under pressure’ in wake of Wagner mutiny says UK spy chief Ireland will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, vows Leo Varadkar South Africa says Putin will skip a summit next month because of his ICC arrest warrant The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary