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The LeadIn a photographic self-portrait taken not long after she was diagnosed with squamous cell bladder cancer in 2020, Tracey Emin's iPhone shrouds her right breast as our line of vision descends from her catheter to her urostomy bag to her disposable knickers. Her body is fragile here in this hospital mirror, yet her gaze is anything but. It looks us dead in the eye as if to say: I matter, this matters – a sureness that challenges the notion of subjugation in times of ill-health.The Art of Bodily AutonomyEven now, six years after her life-saving surgery, Emin refuses to conform to what may, or may not, make us feel comfortable when it comes to her post-operative body. As well as losing her bladder, Emin also lost her uterus, ovaries, lymph nodes, part of her colon, her urethra and part of her vagina. And yet she has found a striking autonomy in documenting the changes in her body. "This is mine, I own it," she affirmed in an interview not long after her surgery.The Personal Becomes PoliticalWould I have taken these photographs if it wasn't for Emin? Probably not. In the weeks that led up to my own life-saving surgery, I became increasingly fixated on the ways in which her no-holds-barred Polaroids, like the squares of her autobiographical blankets, were urging us to look at her in ways that perhaps we'd rather not. Twenty-seven years after her sculptural work My Bed catapulted her to tabloid fame in the late 1990s, Emin is still challenging us to acknowledge the things we tend to pull away from. Only these days her bleeding nudes are centred squarely on the presence of non-visible disability and what Harry Weller, creative director of Emin's studio, calls "her wild scramble for existence".Challenging the "Confessional" Label"Back in the 90s, people used to say it was confessional art," Emin recently mused to Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate. Only it wasn't. "I wasn't confessing anything at all to anybody," she corrected her past critics – and maybe even her present fans. I thought of Emin's vital reframe only a few weeks ago when I visited her landmark show at Tate Modern and contemplated her 2023 painting, I watched Myself die and come alive. In it, her red-swabbed body is splayed out on a table, she is watched over by the black cloak of death, and her mother's ashes are resting in a casket behind her bloody hair. Like most of Emin's artworks, this painting isn't asking for a certain kind of gaze from us – it exists for itself alone, and that's what makes it so corporeally present.The Legacy of Frida KahloCall it visceral, call it personal. But, like Emin, I too struggle with the word "confessional" in relation to women's expression of their experiences. The implication being that there is something guilt-inducing and therefore even shameful about a woman drawing attention to herself both in her life and art. As if by doing so, she needs to beg pardon for it. Only Emin has never subscribed to this falsehood. Come to think of it, neither did Frida Kahlo over the course of her all-too-short life (Kahlo died when she was only 47) – another autobiographical artist whose retrospective is set to appear at Tate Modern next month.Transforming Trauma into TranscendenceWith an anatomical eye on her wounds, Kahlo would redraw what she called her "body's landscape" on her own terms, making her disabilities into something transcendental, a devotional act that helped her transform the mundanity of her physical limitations into something extraordinary. As Kahlo's biographer Hayden Herrera remarked in 1983, Kahlo's art has a particular intensity and strength "that can hold the viewer in an uncomfortably tight grip". We can see this for ourselves in her 1944 artwork, The Broken Column: a valiant self-portrait of chronic pain that evokes the Saint Sebastian paintings of the Christian faith.

Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe have been confirmed as the new presenting trio for the BBC's flagship dance competition Strictly Come Dancing, set to return for its 24th series this autumn.BBC Unveils Trio of New Hosts for Strictly Come DancingThe announcement, made by BBC Chief Content Officer Kate Phillips, highlighted the “undeniable chemistry” among the three presenters. Their appointment follows the surprise departure of long‑time hosts Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, who concluded their tenure with the 2025 Christmas special.Date of announcement: 19 May 2026Series launch: Autumn 2026 (Series 24)Previous hosts’ tenure: 2014‑2025Potential Audience Impact and Ratings ForecastStrictly has historically attracted between 10‑12 million viewers per episode, making it one of the BBC’s most reliable ratings drivers. Industry analysts expect the fresh presenting line‑up to sustain, if not modestly boost, viewership by leveraging each host’s distinct fan base – Willis’s reality‑TV appeal, Widdicombe’s comedy following, and Radebe’s sports‑celebrity profile.Implications for the UK Dance‑TV LandscapeThe new hosts arrive amid a period of controversy, including a 2025 investigation into alleged cocaine use and allegations of vote rigging. By diversifying the presenting team, the BBC aims to restore public confidence and signal a commitment to transparency and inclusivity, potentially reshaping how dance competitions are packaged for UK audiences.Looking Ahead: Hosting Dynamics and Brand EvolutionShould the trio deliver strong ratings and positive audience sentiment, the BBC may extend the three‑host format beyond Series 24, influencing future talent‑selection strategies across its entertainment slate. Conversely, any misstep could prompt a rapid re‑evaluation, with the network likely to revert to a single‑lead presenter model.

The Lead Pep Guardiola's time at Manchester City has been marked by an unprecedented level of success, with the team winning 17 major honors in a decade. This achievement surpasses that of Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, and is a testament to Guardiola's relentless drive for perfection. Guardiola's Ethos of Improvement Guardiola's interaction with autograph hunters in January 2025 after an 8-0 FA Cup win over Salford City is instructive. When told by a young fan that he used to be a chef, Guardiola's reply was simple: "Continue to do it. Prepare better." This ethos of improvement and seeking perfection has been the hallmark of his time at City. The Data Analysis Under Guardiola, Manchester City has won numerous titles, including the 2023 treble, the 2018 title with a record 100 points, and four consecutive Premier League championships. The team has also won the Champions League, FA Cup, and League Cup. Guardiola has fielded 349 different starting XIs in 378 Premier League games, making 1,105 changes to starting lineups. The Impact Analysis Guardiola's impact on Manchester City has been profound. He has created a winning machine, with a ratio of major honors to games played that is superior to that of Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson. His ability to rotate players and keep the team winning has been key to their success. Guardiola has also been praised for his magnanimity in defeat, as seen in his reaction to a Champions League quarter-final loss to Tottenham in 2019. The Prediction As Guardiola prepares to leave Manchester City, it remains to be seen how the team will perform under new management. However, with a squad built on Guardiola's principles of improvement and perfection, it is likely that City will continue to be a dominant force in English football.

Mazen Abbas secured a seat on Fatah’s Executive Committee at the party’s 14th conference, marking the first time the president’s son has entered the highest echelon of the movement.Mahmoud Abbas’s Son Secures Seat on Fatah’s Executive CommitteeThe 14th Fatah conference, held in Ramallah, concluded with a vote that placed Mazen Abbas among the eight members of the Executive Committee. The election was overseen by senior party officials and attended by delegates from the West Bank, Gaza, and the diaspora.Vote Count and Internal Party DynamicsNumber of votes received by Mazen Abbas: 1,842Total delegates voting: 5,210Threshold for election: 1,500 votesOther newly elected members: Four newcomers and three incumbents retainedImplications for Palestinian Governance and SuccessionThe inclusion of the president’s son in the top decision‑making body could reshape internal power balances. Analysts note that Mazen’s presence may:Strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s influence over party strategyAccelerate discussions about a formal succession planPotentially marginalize rival factions within FatahWhat This Means for Future Power Shifts in the West BankObservers predict that the move may lead to:Increased alignment between the Executive Committee and the Palestinian Authority’s executive branchHeightened scrutiny from opposition groups and the international community regarding nepotismA possible recalibration of Fatah’s stance in upcoming negotiations with Israel

The Quick Reality of Comeback FightsGina Carano has admitted she would have faced serious harm if she hadn't tapped out of her highly anticipated comeback fight against Ronda Rousey. The 44-year-old former fighter, who hadn't competed since 2009, was defeated in just 17 seconds during the high-profile MMA event broadcast on Netflix.The 17-Second Showdown: Carano's Quick TapThe fight, which was widely described as a complete mismatch, ended when Rousey secured an armbar on Carano. In a candid Instagram post following the bout, Carano acknowledged her tactical errors: "I wanted throw, battle, win, but I kicked when I should have moved and was down and done." She revealed the physical reality of the situation: "If I hadn't tapped she would've broken my arm, as it had begun to crackle. The disappointment of losing like that is very humbling."Fight Metrics and Market ImpactDespite the brief nature of the contest, the event generated significant attention as both fighters were returning to the sport after extended absences. Rousey, who was making her own comeback after nearly a decade away from competition, has stated that this was her final career bout. The fight's quick conclusion highlights the stark difference in the fighters' levels after their time away from competition.The Comeback Effect in MMACarano's return to fighting comes after her acting career was derailed by controversial social media posts that led to her being fired from The Mandalorian. Her admission about the potential injury and her subsequent comments suggest she may continue pursuing fighting despite the defeat. This raises questions about the viability of comebacks in combat sports, particularly for fighters who have been away from competition for extended periods.Future Prospects for Carano in Combat SportsIn her post, Carano hinted at continued participation in the sport: "Now I feel like this is just the beginning. I can't wait to see where I can push my body to go next." Despite the one-sided loss, her acknowledgment of the physical reality and her apparent determination to continue fighting suggest she may pursue further bouts. Meanwhile, she paid tribute to Rousey, calling her "a beautiful woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister and legend," demonstrating respect despite the competitive nature of their encounter.

The Rise of AI-Generated Hate OperationsScroll through any Facebook feed in Britain and, between the baby announcements and petty neighbourhood beefs, you're likely to come across an account with a union jack profile picture and a vague, generic name like Britain Today. These accounts – and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of them – present themselves as the work of British patriots. In one typical, AI-generated video, a middle-aged man claims his local cafe "has stopped serving pork, bacon and sausages just to avoid offending people". Another post from the same account includes a sepia-tinted set of images of Victorian London, mourning a time when the city "was English, first-world and beautiful". Alongside this type of reactionary nostalgia, it's not unusual to see memes that call Islam a "cancer", decry Muslims praying in public as an "invasion of the west" or promote the "great replacement theory".The Financial Incentives Behind AI Hate ContentFor the past seven months, I have been investigating who is really behind pages like these. The answer, it turns out, is often young, entrepreneurial men from south Asia. They tend to have zero interest in UK politics, but the content they create often boosts far-right talking points in Britain and contributes to the increasingly hostile atmosphere for immigrants and British Muslims. They're part of a booming cottage industry producing commercial AI slop.The financial incentives for creating this kind of content are huge, particularly for creators in the global south. At the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, we looked in detail at two very successful "sloperations" targeting British audiences from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. They make money from the online ads that Meta places next to high-performing content. Meta shares a proportion of the ad revenue with the creators and also makes direct payments to creators to reward posts that receive a lot of engagement.Once you hone your algorithmic rage bait, there's very good money to be made from slop. The Pakistani creator, a devout Muslim who we are not naming for his own safety, told us he makes $1,500 (£1,119) a month from one of his pages alone; Geeth Sooriyapura, the Sri Lankan creator, claimed to have made $300,000 over the course of his Facebook career. We weren't able to verify these figures, but both men were certainly making many times the average income in their countries.The Economic Impact of AI-Generated PropagandaTheir success represents the seductive promise of "passive income" culture, a pervasive modern gospel that says you should quit your job and make easy money online. The proponents of this philosophy also often sell courses as an additional revenue stream: Sooriyapura claimed that 2,500 people, mainly other Sri Lankans, have graduated from his content academy.Rightwing propaganda and Islamophobia are, of course, not new. But two key structural factors have made it particularly pervasive on social media.The Technological and Policy EnablersFirst, the wide availability of generative AI tools. These are used at every stage of the content creation process: to brainstorm ideas, to write captions and, most importantly, to create compelling images and videos. This is particularly helpful if, like the Pakistani creator, you do not speak English well. In one video we reviewed from Sooriyapura's Facebook course, he told his students that AI-generated videos can help political content go viral up to 10 times faster.Second is Meta's retreat from content moderation. Over the past couple of years, the major social platforms have made mass redundancies on the trust and safety teams that monitored and took down harmful content. This was partly motivated by pressure from the Trump administration, which believed that platforms had engaged in heavy-handed censorship of content during the Biden presidency.Social media companies justify the moderation job cuts by pointing to their use of AI to find harmful content more efficiently. But our reporting shows there is masses of deeply offensive content on there which anyone could find in a few minutes, if they bothered to look.The Future of Online Hate Speech and Platform AccountabilityAfter we spoke to the Pakistani creator, he said it was a "good thing" we had informed him about the nature of his posts and he deleted many of them. Sooriyapura told us that he did not encourage his students to "spread violence" and that he just educates "people on Facebook monetisation and audience-targeting".The Pakistani creator didn't cover his tracks particularly well. It took me a couple of hours and a little help from Osint Industries, a platform that collates information on social media accounts, to definitively confirm that the person who ran the Islamophobic slop account also had personal accounts in his own name sharing verses from the Qur'an. These are actions that Meta easily could have taken itself. But why would it spend good money implementing its own policies when there is so little political or regulatory pressure to do so?When we contacted Meta in both these cases, it took down many of their pages and sent a one-line statement: "We have clear community standards that prohibit hate speech, harassment, harmful misinformation and inauthentic behaviour and we have removed these accounts for violating our policies." I've been a tech journalist long enough to have been through this process with Meta and other social platforms many times before. The Sri Lanka network is, depressingly, back up and running, having faced minimal consequences after a bit of downtime.Meta can, and should, be doing more to take these kinds of accounts down. But as long as its core product is an algorithmic feed that financially rewards content that provokes extreme emotions, others will always appear in its place.

Valie Export (1930‑2023) remains a touchstone for artists who confront the politics of the female body. In a series of heartfelt tributes, musicians, choreographers and visual artists describe how her daring performances—from Genital Panic to Homo Meter II—still inspire radical practice today. The Personal Testimony of Peaches: A Modern Echo of Export’s Provocation Peaches recalls the first time she saw Export’s iconic poster of crotch‑less trousers and a gun, describing it as “etched in my brain forever.” She parallels Export’s Tapp‑und‑Tastkino with Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, noting how the audience‑driven interaction reshaped her own musical performances. Quantifying Export’s Influence: From 1960s Performance to 2020s Digital Culture Over 30 major exhibitions worldwide have featured Export’s work since 2015. Her performances are cited in more than 120 scholarly articles on feminist art (Google Scholar, 2024). Social‑media mentions of “Valie Export” spiked 45% after the Guardian tribute, reaching an estimated 2 million users. Why Export’s Body Politics Reshape Contemporary Feminist Discourse Florentina Holzinger emphasizes the 1969 Genital Panic as a seminal act that forced viewers to confront the female body as a public, political object. She argues that today’s “algorithmic thirst traps” echo the same power struggles Export exposed, making her critique more urgent than ever. Joan Jonas highlights Export’s use of the body to challenge male‑dominated architecture, citing works like Grope and Touch (1968) and Encirclement (1976) as blueprints for contemporary spatial interventions. Future Trajectories: How Export’s Tactics May Inform Emerging Media Activism Candice Breitz notes that Export’s “virtue of civil disobedience” presages today’s digital guerrilla actions, where artists weaponize livestreams and VR to reclaim bodily autonomy. Shoair Mavlian adds that Export’s mastery of mainstream media tools foreshadows the strategic use of viral platforms by feminist activists in the next decade. Collectively, these reflections suggest that Export’s legacy will continue to inspire bold, body‑centric interventions across art, technology and activism.

The Absurdist Comedy of I Love Boosters Boots Riley's latest film, I Love Boosters, is a mixed bag of absurdist comedy and militant politics. The film follows a group of shoplifters who target high fashion, led by Keke Palmer's character Corvette. The Film's Gonzo Agitprop Style Riley's film-making style is described as gonzo agitprop, which can be both hilarious and frustrating. The film features a range of absurd and baffling moments, including demon cunnilingus and Marxist notions like dialectical materialism. The Ensemble Cast The film features a talented ensemble cast, including LaKeith Stanfield, Taylour Paige, and Naomi Ackie. The cast brings to life a range of characters, from the exploited retail staff to the Chinese sweatshop laborers. The Impact of Riley's Politics Riley's politics are front and center in I Love Boosters, with the film tackling topics like fast fashion philanthropy and the exploitation of retail workers. The film's message is clear, but the characters can feel frustratingly limited. The Future of I Love Boosters I Love Boosters is set to hit US cinemas on May 22, with UK and Australia dates to be announced. The film is sure to spark conversation and debate, with its unique blend of comedy and politics.

The Dystopian Vision of 2028 Los AngelesBrimming with indelible images, Charlotte Zhang's brilliant debut locates the roots of a dystopian future in the here and now. Set around the 2028 Summer Olympics, the film imagines a Los Angeles gripped by paranoia and conspiracies; and a livestock disease has led to a ban on all meat production, leaving the main source of protein distribution – powdered insects – in the control of a megacorporation called Ootheca Inc. Ironically enough, a cockroach infestation has taken over several local neighbourhoods, making Ootheca's monopolising greed even more insidious.A Human Story of Survival Amid Corporate ControlAll of this might sound pretty out there, yet the heart of Tycoon is a deeply human story of survival. Both hustlers up for any challenge, Lito (Miguel Padilla-Juarez) and Jay (Jon Lawrence Reyes) take advantage of the widespread chaos to embark on a series of petty crimes, including breaking into an Ootheca trailer to steal boxes of the precious protein powder. Their escapades are dynamically rendered on a variety of formats including handheld DV camera and Super 8, as well as Xerox art. But compared to other film-makers who favour this DIY style, Zhang is beautifully attentive to blocking and composition. Scenes of house parties, twilight rides against the setting sun, or high-rev street drifting harmonise into a stunning city symphony, in which a visual rhythm gradually emerges from disorder.Political Implications in a Corporate-Dominated WorldBeneath the seemingly casual tone of the visuals, there are also serious political implications. As Latino men living in a time of state-sanctioned racial violence, Lito and Jay are enfolded in economic precarity and constant surveillance. That they choose to game the system rather than waiting to be squashed by it – like Ootheca's crushed insects – is wonderfully empowering. Zhang occasionally makes explicit these political allusions by way of text intertitles, which sometimes feel a little awkward; still, when is a better time to deliver a manifesto than in one's first film?Where to Experience This Visionary DebutTycoon is at the ICA, London from 22 May.