Emperor

A surprise amount of Brits say they would take anti-obesity drugs if they were given to them for free on the NHS.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist are a family of medications that help manage blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes, but have also been found to help obese people lose weight.

The drugs include Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide, and semaglutide, which is sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus.

The survey of 1,078 adults, carried out by Ipsos, found 24% of people would use weight-loss jabs if they were provided for free by the health service.

When asked about their own body image, four in 10 told the survey they think they are overweight or obese.

Britain is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, now that the US president, Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.

...

Russia, however, accused the west of escalation and said that Biden risked adding “fuel to the fire” in Ukraine, and while Donald Trump remained silent on the issue, his son Don Jr accused the military industrial complex of wanting to get “world war three going”.

Storm Shadow missiles have a range of about 250km (155 miles), similar to the US Atacms, and have in the past been given to Kyiv by the UK and France to strike targets inside Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.

But the US retained an effective veto on their use because it supplies a guidance system and repeated lobbying by the UK had failed to shift the US position, which has only begun to soften after the election victory of Donald Trump earlier this month.

...

Ukraine had also become increasingly exasperated with Britain on the issue of long-range missiles, complaining earlier this month that not only had there been no progress on their use inside Russia but that the UK had stopped supplying them at all.

Email's been here for years. But the reason Substack wants you to call your creative work by their brand name is because they control your audience and distribution, and they want to own your content and voice, too. You may not think you care about that today, but you will when you see what they want to do with it.

I know you think you have control over your subscribers on Substack. But understand this: every single new feature Substack releases, from their social sharing to their mobile apps, is proprietary and locks you into their network. They don't let your writing live on your own website or domain under your control unless you pay them for the privilege. And it'd be a shame if something happened to those subscription dollars you're counting on, wouldn't it? Even when you say "but my readership is growing!" know that most new subscribers come from other writers referring their readers to you. Somehow... Substack wants credit for those writers making that choice? Even though it was your writing that inspired it? That's not some magical network effect thanks to Substack! That's just the internet, working as it was supposed to.

Links are powerful — that's why Instagram and Twitter and Threads punish and limit them, and why Substack tries to take credit for them. And that's why "wherever you get your podcasts" is such a radical concept — like email, it's a medium that the tech tycoons don't, and can't, own. People can read your writing "wherever they get their email".

We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable.

Police in Lincolnshire have urged motorists to stop chasing an on-the-run emu in off-road vehicles.

Officers in Boston said there had been sightings for a "couple of weeks" in the Spilsby area but the bird is at risk of being injured and people should not approach it.

It's currently unclear where the emu escaped from.

Posting on Facebook, police said: "Experts have been trying to gain her trust by feeding her in the same spot for a while, however, efforts are being scuppered and staff and volunteers are concerned because members of the public have been chasing her in 4x4s.

...

The National Exotics Animal Rescue Service is on the scene and has called in a specialist team to coordinate the emu's capture, police said.

If you’re a Tom Hardy fan, you’ve always wanted to see him cause real havoc. Sure, across his career he’s manufactured mayhem, proffered pain, brought memorable muscle – but you’ve never seen him go really all-out. That’s about to change. Next year finally brings the release of HAVOC, the new film from The Raid legend Gareth Evans, returning from the high-octane small-screen antics of Gangs Of London, and ready to send Hardy into the hardman stratosphere.

The film has been a longtime coming – partly owing to additional photography that required a cast and crew of booked-and-busy brawlers to all be available. But as Evans promises, HAVOC is worth the wait. “It’s had a profound effect on the film,” he tells Empire of the extra shooting. “It allowed me to better streamline it, and make it what it was always intended to be, which is a blistering, fast-paced action-thriller with nods to the Hong Kong cinema that I grew up watching.” Sounds like a Gareth Evans film, then.

The Predator franchise has, over the years, given us all kinds of heroes. We got Arnie’s rippling muscles in the original; Danny Glover’s LA cop in the sequel; a gaggle of reprobates in Predators; and, most recently, Amber Midthunder’s Comanche warrior Naru in Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey. But for his next Predator outing, Trachtenberg has something very different planned. 2025 will see the release of Predator: Badlands (as well as another film in the franchise that he shot simultaneously in secret), which isn’t exactly a follow-up to Prey but a future-set tale taking place on an alien planet. And, most importantly, it brings a very different kind of Predator protagonist: the Predator itself.

“The creature is front and centre, leading the charge,” Trachtenberg grins, speaking to Empire in the Andor Season 2 issue. “He’s still badass, but there’s something there that touches you emotionally, too. Creating a character you connect with, but are also super-intimidated by, has been challenging. But exciting.” The idea, he says, came from a desire to “find another essential piece of cinema that does what Prey did spiritually — pushing the franchise’s boundaries, letting us root for a hero we rarely get to root for — but in a different way. And that transformed into this big idea of rooting for the Predator.” Finally, the ugly mother-effer’s day has come.

Paying a premium for a flight during the school holidays or a cab at peak hours might be expected but fluctuating charges – otherwise known as surge pricing – could become the norm in other industries, say experts.

...

The Wardour Street branch of O’Neill’s pub in Soho, central London, has implemented an additional £2 charge to pints ordered after 10pm. This means a pint of Brewdog IPA that costs £7.40 during the day will cost £9.40 after 10pm. The policy has been in place since 2022 to comply with the licensing requirement for more security staff.

Some customers expressed their disappointment on social media at the price bump. One wrote on X: “This new idea of dynamic pricing is ridiculous, greedy and needs calling out. Very shortsighted.”

However, another noted that charging more during busier periods was similar to discounts and offers at quieter times. “I was going to say I thought it was awful, but is it not simply ‘happy hour’ in reverse? ”

...

Restaurants, bars and pubs may increase prices during busier times such as celebrations or match days. However, this is something we might see on a more regular basis, Stahl said.

Stonegate Group, Britain’s largest pub group and owner of chains including the Slug & Lettuce and Yates’s, said it was raising prices at 800 of its venues during peak times, such as weekends, to help cover costs, including staffing.

A pint of beer during the busiest periods would cost drinkers 20p more. It has previously done so during special events, such as World Cups.

In gardens a few metres from Leicester Cathedral, archaeologists have made a disturbing discovery. Their excavations have revealed a narrow vertical shaft filled with the remains of 123 men, women and children.

It is one of the largest pit burials ever excavated in the UK, with subsequent research suggesting the bodies were dumped there more than 800 years ago, early in the 12th century.

However, the reasons for putting the corpses in this tiny, ancient shaft remain a mystery.

“Their bones show no signs of violence – which leaves us with two alternative reasons for these deaths: starvation or pestilence,” said Mathew Morris, project officer at Leicester University’s archaeological services. “At the moment, the latter is our main working hypothesis.”

The excavations by Morris and his colleagues suggest the bodies were put into the shaft in three deposits, in rapid succession. “It looks as if successive cartloads of bodies were brought to the shaft and then dropped into it, one load on top of another in a very short space of time,” he said. “In terms of numbers, the people put in there probably represented about 5% of the town’s population.”

...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles repeatedly mention great pestilences and fevers, severe mortality, and miserable deaths from hunger and famine in England from the mid-10th century through to the mid-12th century, said Morris. “This mass burial fits within this timeframe and provides physical proof of what was then occurring across the nation.”

Unlucky fans who did not bag tickets to next year’s Glastonbury Festival have taken to social media to slam the new ticket queue system.

Festival organisers debuted a setup on Sunday (17 November) where punters were “randomly assigned a place in the queue” rather than refreshing the holding page when tickets went live.

Tickets to Glastonbury Festival 2025 sold out after 37 minutes, with hopefuls branding the new process as “outrageous” and “horrendous”.