An easyJet flight attendant has revealed the ‘secret language’ that cabin crew use to communicate with each other while on board a flight
12:00, 03 Nov 2025Updated 14:27, 03 Nov 2025
The flight attendant said it was a ‘secret language’ (stock image)
An easyJet flight attendant has spilled the beans on the covert language they use to communicate while onboard. An anonymous member of the budget airline’s cabin crew popped up on their Instagram feed to spill the secrets.
Interestingly, it is not a spoken language, but more akin to sign language, with various gestures signifying different things. She revealed: “While I’m here on my own I’ll let you into a little secret.
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“As cabin crew you may be aware but we do have a secret language on board, a way of communicating to each other when we want food items and with over 200 passengers on board the plane is very long so you may have noticed that if you would like a ham and cheese sandwich we do a croque monsieur, a chicken wrap, and a calzone pizza but don’t tell anyone I told you.”
Whilst mentioning the croque monsieur, she mimicked a crocodile with her hand. For the chicken wrap, she extended an arm out like a chicken wing before rolling her hands together to signify a wrap. Lastly, for the calzone, she placed the heel of her hands together before bringing her palms and fingers together, presumably to illustrate the folding together of a calzone.
People in the comments section were impressed, with one saying: “Absolutely iconic!”
“We were just talking about this after our flight last month,” said another, while one person said: “I saw a crew member do this to another crew member, I realised it was internal sign language!”
“I often watch the crew doing this trying to work out what they’re on about lol,” one person said. Another said: “Ha ha my Mrs worked a few out on our flight back to MAN from AGP last week.”
GEN Z are killing off terms like ‘grub,’ ‘sarnie,’ and ‘pop’ – in favour of ‘scran,’ ‘sub,’ and ‘soda.’
A poll of 2,000 adults has revealed how younger adults are driving a generational shift in food language – from breakfast to dinner.
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Terms like ‘sandwich’ and ‘tea’ are on the decline as Gen Z come up with new ways to name their favourite foods and drinks
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Bread rolls were found to have many varied-terms to describe it
Using ‘tea’ to refer to the evening meal, ‘nosh’ to talk about food generally, and ‘cuppa’ for a hot drink are also out of favour among under-29s, along with ‘squash.’
While the term ‘sandwich’ is also in decline, with younger adults adopting American-inspired terms such as ‘hoagie’ and ‘hero’ Instead.
A spokesperson for McDonald’s UK&I, which commissioned the research to mark the launch of its new RSPCA assured pork patty Sausage Sandwich on the Saver Menu, said: “Language is constantly evolving, and food slang is no exception.”
The study also found the biggest influence on Gen Z’s food language is their family, which holds greater sway than the local area they grew up in and social media, which came second and third respectively.
Interestingly, more than any other age group, 49% of Gen Z also believe they use a greater number of regional food words than other generations do.
With nearly half (49%) claiming to use them ‘very often’ or ‘often.’
Across all ages, the main barriers to using regional slang include not hearing it enough in conversation (28%) or believing others won’t understand (17%).
However, 40% are curious to know what unfamiliar regional food terms mean, with 18% looking them up online.
Overall, the research, carried out through OnePoll, found 70% believe regional food terms – whether they relate to breakfast, lunch, dinner, or specific foods or drinks – should be preserved as part of cultural heritage, even if they are declining in popularity.
One of the biggest regional variations was what people call a bread roll.
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Some of the new food terms used by Gen Z are influenced by America words
While the term was number one for all regions, ‘cob’ is popular among those living in the West and East Midlands (21% and 42%).
And ‘Barm’ is commonplace in the North West (26%), with Fam‘teacake’ frequently used in Yorkshire and Humber (18%).
The spokesperson for McDonald’s added: “Our Sausage Sandwich is already sparking its own naming debates – burger or sandwich.”
Although the research suggests a strong preference – when shown an image of this menu item, 76% of those polled described it as a ‘burger,’ with just 24% opting for ‘sandwich.’
FOOD TERM TRENDS TO KNOW ABOUT
10 FOOD TERMS IN DECLINE:
Tea – to refer to the evening meal Cuppa – to refer to a cup of tea Squash – to refer to a drink made with water and cordial Pop – to refer to a carbonated drink Sandwich – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Sarnie – to also refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Roll – to refer to the small, oblong individual loaf of bread Bap – to also refer to the small, oblong individual loaf of bread Grub – to refer to food generally Nosh – to also refer to food generally
10 FOOD TERMS ON THE RISE:
Hoagie – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Supper – to refer to the evening meal Juice – to refer to a drink made with water and cordial Sub – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Doorstep – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Scran – to refer to food generally Snap – to refer to food, usually lunch Piece – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between Soda – to refer to a carbonated drink Hero – to refer to the food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between
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Food terms for Gen Z were found to be primarily influence by family members
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A survey of 2000 adults found that Gen Z are adopting major changes in the way they term foods and drinks
After George’s warning last night, Caroline was called into the Diary Room during tonight’s episode, as she was giving a formal warning by Big Brother for unacceptable behaviour
22:31, 07 Oct 2025Updated 23:11, 07 Oct 2025
Caroline was given a warning by Big Brother(Image: ITV/BBUK/INSTAGRAM)
It was a dramatic night in Big Brother tonight, as the housemates were called to the Diary Room to nominate for the first time. However, it wasn’t the only time Caroline was called to the famous room, as she was given a formal warning by Big Brother.
Like George Gilbert, Caroline’s warning came after a comment she had made during a housemate game of spin the bottle. As she was pulled into the Diary Room, the voice of Big Brother told her: “Yesterday at 11:21pm during a game of spin of the bottle, you had the following conversations.
Big Brother recalled the conversation, in which Caroline asked which housemate she would sleep with if they were trapped on a desert island and she “might be able to make babies to get a new civilisation.”
Nancy then asked Caroline if it had to be a guy, as Jenny said she was pansexual. “Is she pansexual? Do you like pans?” Caroline asked, as Zelah told her to just ask Nancy who she was most attracted to.
Nancy then answered Zelah, as Caroline responded: “She’s a girl. No you’re not!” she then added: “But you haven’t got a willy. Is that really bad? But I was talking about…I’m so sorry Z. Is that bad? That was bad wasn’t it? Oh no, I’m dead now. Is that bad?’”
Zelah has been open about his transition with housemates – and Caroline told Big Brother she was “ashamed” of herself as she hung her head in shame in the Diary Room.
“Caroline, Big Brother thinks that your language in these instances was offensive and unacceptable and cannot permit you to use language in a way that could cause offence to your fellow Housemates and the viewing public,” Big Brother said, as they gave Caroline a formal warning, in which she agreed.
When asked if there was anything she’d like to say, Caroline added: “Sorry. It was a horrible thing I said. Horrible. I don’t know where it came from.
“I can’t excuse myself. If I had an excuse I’d say but I don’t have one. I’m sorry to everyone out there and I’m sorry to everyone in here. I will make sure I apologise profusely to everyone because I can see the disappointment in everyone’s eyes. I was having such a lovely time, more than lovely. I’ve gone and ruined everything. I can’t see a way back.”
Zelah was left in tears in the Diary Room, telling Big Brother: “I didn’t think it would affect me that much. That’s why I didn’t want to tell anyone from the get go, because once people know their true perceptions come out. But ‘she’s a girl’ was strong.”
“I’m so down for people asking questions, I think it’s really important, but sometimes my openness comes at the expense of my own feelings. I can’t remember the last time words hit me like that.”
It comes after George was given a warning by Big Brother during last night’s episode after a game of Truth or Dare in which he was asked about his least favourite thing about each housemate.
Big Brother told him: “At 11:26, during a game of Truth or Dare, when asked about your least favourite qualities of other Housemates, you said the following, ‘Sam, um too…’, you then went on to mimic Sam using both noises that mocked the way Sam talks and body language that included limp wrists.
“Do you understand how both your language and behaviour could be offensive to Sam, your Housemates and the viewing public?” George then confirmed he had apologised to Sam after making the comments.
No one goes to Cannes expecting to be frightened by a film about a long-dead British writer. Unless, of course, that writer is George Orwell.
When Raoul Peck’s documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5” premiered at the festival in May, the crowd reacted with the startled tension of a horror screening — gasps, murmurs, a few cries — before finally breaking into thunderous applause.
What they saw on screen felt both familiar and terrifyingly current. Peck builds the film entirely from Orwell’s words, delivered in a low, steady burn by actor Damian Lewis (“Billions”), repositioning the dying author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in his final tubercular days on the Scottish Isle of Jura, into today’s world. His vision of power, propaganda and language as a weapon meets a barrage of torn-from-the-news imagery: refugees adrift on boats, authoritarian leaders twisting the truth, AI hallucinations blurring what’s left of reality. The film, to be released nationwide on Friday by Neon, plays less like a documentary than a séance in which Orwell’s ghost watches his own warnings play out: urgent, relentless, immersive as a nightmare.
Peck says the Cannes reception didn’t surprise him.
“I knew it would touch a nerve,” Peck, 72, says over Zoom from New York. His calm, French-accented voice — he’s based in Paris but travels frequently — carries the quiet fatigue of someone who’s spent decades watching history repeat itself. “It’s not just a problem of the U.S. — it’s everywhere. We have all sorts of bullies and there’s no reliable sheriff in town. Even the most powerful institutions are on shaky ground. I knew the film would either break people or energize them. If you’re a normal citizen, a normal human being, you must ask yourself questions when you come out of it.”
There are no talking heads in Peck’s film, no experts spelling out the relevance of an author who died in 1950. Instead, he draws from the writer’s letters and diaries, as well as the longer-form works like the barnyard political allegory “Animal Farm” and the dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” He also weaves in fragments from past screen adaptations of Orwell’s titles, including the 1954 animated “Animal Farm” and Michael Radford’s stark, desaturated adaptation of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” starring John Hurt, cross-cutting them with current images of drone wars, surveillance and algorithmic control.
A scene from the documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5.”
(Velvet Film)
“Raoul has been unbelievably thorough,” says narrator Lewis via Zoom from his home in London, where he regularly rides his bike past one of Orwell’s former residences. “The film is dense in the best way, thick with ideas and images. You come out of it feeling like you’ve been through something important.”
Lewis, who delivers Orwell’s words with a steely intensity that builds toward alarm, says his warnings have only grown more urgent.
“I read recently that about 37% of countries in the world are now categorized as not free,” he adds. “That’s getting dangerously close to half the planet. What Raoul’s film captures — and what Orwell saw so clearly — is how authoritarian ideas don’t arrive overnight. They creep up on us, little by little, as words like ‘democracy’ get redefined to mean whatever those in power want them to mean.”
Peck’s filmmaking has long blurred the line between art and activism. Born in Haiti, he fled with his family from François Duvalier’s dictatorship in 1961 and grew up in what was then the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where his father worked for the United Nations. After studying engineering and economics in Berlin, he returned home to serve as Haiti’s minister of culture in the 1990s. His breakthrough, the Oscar-nominated 2016 film “I Am Not Your Negro,” channeled James Baldwin’s words to examine race and power in America and the country’s uneasy reckoning with its past. He continued that exploration in HBO’s “Exterminate All the Brutes” (2021), tracing the myths of empire and white supremacy that shape the modern world.
“If I can’t mix politics and art, I probably wouldn’t make a project,” Peck says. “That’s what Orwell himself said — ‘Animal Farm’ was the first time he was really trying to link politics with art. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do all my life as a filmmaker.”
Few writers have been more quoted — or misquoted — than Orwell. Decades after coining ideas such as Newspeak (state-controlled language) and doublethink (the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at once), he’s been claimed by every side: Fear-mongering politicians cite him, pundits weaponize him, partisans wield “Orwellian” as shorthand for whatever offends them most. Even President Trump recently praised Orwell in the same breath as Shakespeare and Dickens at a state banquet at Windsor Castle.
Asked what Orwell would make of that, Peck gives a small, mirthless laugh.
“He would probably faintly smile,” he says. “Because that’s exactly what he wrote about — how thought corrupts language and language corrupts thought. We’re living doublespeak now in an exponential way, the bully using the words of justice and peace while bombing people at the same moment. It’s so absurd. That’s why I feel so close to him. Coming from Haiti, I learned very early that what politicians were saying never matched my reality.”
George Orwell, author of “1984” and “Animal Farm,” whose warnings about power and language echo through the timely documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5.”
(Associated Press)
Peck came to the project warily. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch Orwell,” he admits. “Where I come from, Orwell had been turned into a kind of Cold War mascot.” Raised under Mobutu Sese Seko’s U.S.-backed regime in what became Zaire and later educated in America and Europe, he was keenly aware of how Orwell’s legacy had been co-opted, from the CIA’s funding of the 1954 animated “Animal Farm” to the deployment of his books as Cold War propaganda.
“That was not something that interested me,” Peck says. “I grew up deconstructing everything I was getting from the West, including Hollywood movies.”
Then came a call from his friend, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and producer Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), who was involved with a project that had secured the rights to Orwell’s complete body of work and wanted Peck to direct it.
“How could I say no?” he recalls. “For a filmmaker like me, who loves to dig deep into someone’s mind and work, it was an incredible gift.”
What Peck found wasn’t a prophet or a symbol but a man full of contradictions: a writer wrestling with class, illness and empire, trying to fuse politics and art before his own time ran out. That realization deepened when he came across a photograph of Orwell as a baby in the arms of his Burmese nanny, a white child of the British Empire cradled by the colonized woman charged with his care. Born into what he called the “lower-upper-middle class,” Orwell gradually recognized his own complicity in the system he opposed and came to despise his role as a kind of middle manager in the machinery of oppression.
“His own biography — born in India, sent to Burma as a young soldier, doing what he did there and being ashamed of it — drew him closer to my own experience,” Peck says. “We were from the same world. We saw the same things.”
To embody Orwell, Peck turned to Lewis, also known for “Band of Brothers” and “Homeland.”
“I knew I was telling a story, not making a traditional documentary,” Peck says. “So I needed a great British actor, someone with real stage experience. I knew Damian could bring the presence I wanted — to be Orwell, not imitate him. That was the main direction I gave him: to work from the interior.”
“If we don’t bring rules around AI very rapidly, we won’t be able to put the paste back in the tube,” says filmmaker Raoul Peck. “AI is an instrument and should stay an instrument. That means we’re using it. It’s not using us.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
Lewis, who had previously voiced Orwell for the international Talking Statues project — an app that lets passersby scan a QR code to hear historical figures “speak” — approached the feature-length performance with similar restraint.
“His language, the rhythm of his prose, dictates the rhythm of delivery,” he says. “Raoul was very clear that it should sound intimate and conversational, not overly formal. That’s what we tried to aim for — something direct, specific, detailed and personal.”
Much of “Orwell: 2+2=5” unfolds like a fever dream, Orwell’s words colliding with scenes from the present, including bombed-out streets in Gaza and Ukraine. “There were too many conflicts to include,” Peck says. “So I had to find the connections — what repeats, how bodies are treated, how power behaves.”
In one of the film’s most charged moments, Peck turns Orwell’s warning about political language into a montage of modern euphemisms: “peacekeeping operations,” “collateral damage,” “illegals” — and then, pointedly, “antisemitism 2024.” He knows the inclusion is provocative but says that’s the point: to show how words can be twisted or emptied of meaning, including in debates over Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Every word is precise,” Peck says. “I don’t say the Jews, I don’t say Israel, I say the Israeli administration. But even then, there’s a reflex — you can’t touch this.”
At Cannes, that moment drew applause. One of Peck’s closest friends — a Jewish writer who, he notes, agrees with him on nearly everything politically — told him later that while she was deeply moved by the film, she’d felt a jolt of fear as the audience clapped.
“We talked about it,” Peck says. “In France today, you can’t touch that term. And for me, that’s the beginning of the end — when you can’t speak your mind.”
He recalls being in New York after 9/11, unable to voice unease about the flag-waving and rush to war. “I cried like everybody else,” he says. “But when, after five days, you’re asked to wave a flag, that’s using your humanity for war. The point is the same — to shut down conversation.”
Peck carries Orwell’s warning into the digital present. The writer’s words play against AI-generated images and voices, echoes of the future he once imagined.
“He wrote about it without knowing it would be called AI,” Peck says. “He said someday you’d be able to write whole books and newspapers with artificial intelligence — exactly what’s happening now.”
For Peck, the technology is the next front in the battle over truth and power. In his film, every AI-generated sound, image and piece of music is clearly labeled with onscreen text.
“There should be transparency about that,” he says. “If we don’t bring rules around AI very rapidly, we won’t be able to put the paste back in the tube. Profit is the only guideline right now — nobody’s controlling its impact, not on energy, not on children, not on schools. AI is an instrument and should stay an instrument. That means we’re using it. It’s not using us.”
Even as “Orwell: 2+2=5” reaches theaters, Peck is already working on two new documentaries, including one about the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
“It’s an incredible geopolitical mess,” he says. “Every day I discover more. I need to go back to fiction for a while — documentaries are exhausting. But I can’t complain. I wish everyone could be as passionate about their work as I am.”
For all its darkness, Peck insists on leaving a sliver of light. He points to Orwell’s line in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”
“The civil society is always the one who saved the day — the civilians, the students, the churches, the alliances,” he says. “Like the civil rights movement. Blacks, Jews, whites, churches, everybody sat down around the table and decided to have a strategy. And unfortunately, that’s the only thing we have. It’s long and it’s hard, but that door is still open. It’s us, individually and collectively, who have to make that choice.”
What keeps him going, he says, isn’t optimism so much as duty.
“If I lived completely engulfed in my own bubble, I’d probably be desperate,” he says. “What keeps me grounded is that I still have friends in Congo. I still work with Haiti every day. I talk with journalists who risk their lives in Gaza. So I can’t afford to look at those people and say, ‘I’m tired.’ They’re still doing the work.”
He pauses, his voice tightening. “People laugh at the latest stupidity from the president, as if it’s funny,” he says. “But that’s a dictatorship coming. He’s attacking every institution — newspapers, academia, justice, business. It’s the same playbook. They change the laws first, because most people would rather obey the law than say ‘No, two plus two equals four.’ That’s what authoritarian leaders count on.”
He sits quietly for a moment. “People are waiting for miracles,” he says finally. “But there are no miracles.”
When Mukhtar Dahiru saw a TikTok video promising he could make money on WhatsApp, he clicked without hesitation. Within days, after he shared a one-time password with the “recruiters”, his WhatsApp account was hijacked, his cryptocurrency wallets drained. He later realised the “opportunity” had been a scam.
“The road is tricky, and this time I fell for it,” he said.
Behind his loss lies a wider scam network preying on thousands. For several Hausa-speaking social media users across northern Nigeria, the promise of making money has become a lure into a sprawling fraud that turns ordinary people into unwitting accomplices and casualties.
On TikTok, the promise appears in dozens of videos, usually featuring a speaker in Hausa urging viewers to join a WhatsApp group to start earning. “Click on the link below to learn how to make money,” one of the videos says. “I’ve made a large amount on WhatsApp, and so can you.”
HumAngle’s month-long monitoring revealed that many of these accounts belonged to real users, while others used deepfakes or manipulated videos. Nearly all featured genuine human faces to strengthen credibility and lure victims.
What makes the scheme particularly effective is TikTok’s algorithmic boost. The clips are upbeat, under a minute, tagged with captions like “samu kudi ta WhatsApp” (“earn money on WhatsApp”), and often promoted through paid sponsorships. This visibility pushes them into thousands of feeds, magnifying their reach.
As of January 2025, TikTok had an estimated 37.4 million users in Nigeria. Meanwhile, WhatsApp remains the country’s most widely used messaging app, with over 51 million active users — about one in four mobile lines nationwide. Together, these figures show how even a small fraction of TikTok’s audience clicking through can funnel hundreds of thousands of people into WhatsApp scam networks.
A screenshot of one of those sponsored posts on TikTok.
The funnel of fraud
Once viewers click the link from the videos, they are funnelled to hastily built websites or directly into WhatsApp groups, which present themselves as “training hubs” offering “tasks” or “affiliate opportunities”.
One WhatsApp group, named Daily Updates, had more than 400 members when archived by HumAngle. These groups act as the glue of the operation; hundreds of recruits are placed into shared chat rooms, where the scam is scaled and coordinated.
Inside these rooms, the onboarding phase is simple: surrender your credentials in exchange for small, regular payouts. This is where the exploitation sets in. LetShare.ng, a central website in the network, even promises ₦2460 instantly through QR codes that secretly grant scammers control of users’ WhatsApp accounts.
LetShare.ng was registered in December 2024, according to WhoIs.com, a website that documents who owns and registers a website. The registrant details are hidden, typical of scam operations. Several other related websites were created within weeks of each other and masked by privacy-protected registrars, giving the network a veneer of legitimacy through glossy logos and testimonials.
A screenshot of LetShare.ng’s domain details.
The glue holding this ecosystem together is referrals. On the LetShare site, recruits are promised ₦300 for every person they bring in. One man told HumAngle he had earned over ₦30,000 this way, meaning he had introduced more than 100 people.
The ‘Daily Updates’ WhatsApp group was created in 2023.
This referral model fuels relentless promotion on TikTok, as each recruit scrambles to register others under their name. “Everyone is looking for someone to register through them,” he explained.
‘It looked like a real job’
The abstract funnel becomes devastatingly real in people’s lives.
This was how Aminu Usman nearly lost money. He told HumAngle that someone posing as his friend asked him for ₦5000, promising a quick repayment. Suspicious, Aminu called his friend, who denied sending the message. His friend later admitted he had been hacked after joining a so-called digital hustle group.
Others were less fortunate. One young man, who declined to give his name, told HumAngle that he had handed over his WhatsApp credentials after being promised steady commissions. “It looked like a real job,” he said. “They paid me ₦12,000 the first week after I gave them access to my WhatsApp account.”
However, within a short period, his WhatsApp number was suspended. He later learned it had been used to spread fraudulent offers to strangers, mostly among his contacts and which forced him to make a disclaimer.
For recruits like these, the cycle almost always ends the same way: suspension, blacklisted numbers, and reputations in tatters, while the operators move swiftly to fresh victims. The people caught in this web are sometimes referred to as “mules.”
“The motivation is always greediness,” Mahmud Labaran Galadanci, a cybersecurity expert, told HumAngle. “In reality, the people who join such schemes end up becoming victims through phishing attacks and leverage scams.”
The Hausa connection
What makes this operation distinctive is its local tailoring. Hausa is one of Africa’s most widely spoken languages, with more than 60 million speakers across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and beyond. On platforms like TikTok, it bridges anglophone and francophone audiences, giving scammers both reach and trust.
HumAngle found dozens of Hausa-language TikTok videos promising ways to “make money on WhatsApp.” Some had racked up thousands of views, with comments reinforcing the illusion of legitimacy.
By using Hausa and familiar slang, operators project trust and cultural proximity. Viewers see themselves reflected on screen, searching for opportunity in a region where unemployment is high and digital literacy is low.
“It is not just about language,” said Mahmud. “It is about trust. These messages are crafted to convince people to click and join the long trail of the scheme.”
However, it is not happening only in Nigeria’s North. Similar schemes are targeting social media users in the country’s South and around the world, where authorities describe them as “task scams” — small paid actions that lure people into larger fraud.
Globally, platforms are struggling to respond. Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, periodically reports banning millions of accounts linked to scams.
TikTok, meanwhile, insists it is stepping up enforcement. Announcing new safety guidelines that came into effect on Sept. 13, Sandeep Grover, the company’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, said: “Over 85 per cent of the content removed for violating our Community Guidelines is identified and taken down by automation, and 99 per cent of that content we remove before anybody reports it to us.”
“We want to make sure that our community is able to safeguard against such scams,” Grover added. In August 2024, the company also launched a Sub-Saharan Africa Safety Advisory Council.
Yet, HumAngle found that TikTok had accepted sponsored promotions for scam videos of this kind, despite policies that claim to prohibit it.
Back in Northern Nigeria, the consequences are particularly severe. Weak digital literacy and high unemployment make communities vulnerable, while the absence of Hausa-language moderation on TikTok has allowed scammers, like jihadists before them, to exploit the platform unchecked.
Mukhtar Dahiru fell victim to a scam after clicking on a TikTok video promising monetary gain through WhatsApp, leading to his account being hijacked and his cryptocurrency drained.
This incident is part of a wider network targeting Hausa-speaking social media users in northern Nigeria, exploiting an enticing scheme amplified through TikTok’s algorithm, which features promises of money-making opportunities that actually funnel victims into WhatsApp-based scams.
The fraudulent schemes often involve hastily built websites and WhatsApp groups masquerading as training hubs, offering small payouts in exchange for credentials. A central website, LetShare.ng, uses referral incentives to draw more victims, presenting a facade of legitimacy through convincing visuals and testimonies. Victims like Aminu Usman and another unnamed participant were drawn into giving up their credentials under false pretenses, resulting in suspended accounts and reputational damage.
The fraud targets populations with low digital literacy and high unemployment, using Hausa language to build trust and credibility among potential victims.
Social media platforms like TikTok are struggling to combat these scams, claiming to enforce strict guidelines, though instances of accepting sponsored scam promotions have been reported. The combination of cultural familiarity, economic challenges, and digital vulnerabilities creates a fertile ground for these scams to thrive in affected regions.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than their working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal and lifted a Los Angeles judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.
The decision is a significant victory for President Trump, clearing the way for his oft-promised “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in American history.
The court’s conservatives issued a brief, unsigned order that freezes the district judge’s restraining order indefinitely and frees immigration agents from it. As a practical matter, it gives immigration agents broad authority to stop people who they think may be here illegally.
Although Monday’s order is not a final ruling, it strongly signals the Supreme Court will not uphold strict limits on the authority of immigration agents to stop people for questioning.
The Supreme Court has been sharply criticized in recent weeks for handing down orders with no explanation. Perhaps for that reason, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a 10-page opinion to explain the decision.
He said federal law says “immigration officers ‘may briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’ if they have ‘a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States.’”
He said such stops are reasonable and legal based on the “totality of the circumstances. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.”
Those were exactly the factors that the district judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said agents may not use as a basis for stopping someone for questioning.
The three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” she wrote.
Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s assertions.
“Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”
In response, Kavanaugh said he agreed agents may not use “excessive force” in making stops or arrests. But the judge’s order dealt only with the legal grounds for making stops, he said.
Kavanaugh stressed the court has a limited role when it comes to immigration enforcement.
“The Judiciary does not set immigration policy or decide enforcement priorities. It should come as no surprise that some Administrations may be more laissez-faire in enforcing immigration law, and other Administrations more strict,” he wrote.
He noted the court had ruled for the Biden administration and against Texas, which had sought stricter enforcement against those who crossed the border or had a criminal record.
The case decided Monday began in early June when Trump appointees targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeps that ensnared longtime residents, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens.
A coalition of civil rights groups and local attorneys challenged the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens caught up in the chaotic arrests, claiming they had been grabbed without reasonable suspicion — a violation of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
The lead plaintiffs — Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and two other Pasadena residents — were arrested at a bus stop when they were waiting to be picked up for a job.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination.
The case remains in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Department of Justice argued even a brief limit on mass arrests constituted a “irreparable injury” to the government.
A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to set aside Frimpong’s order. They said agents should be allowed to act on the assumption that Spanish-speaking Latinos who work as day laborers, at car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.
“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal. Agents can consider “the totality of the circumstances” when making stops, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the Central District [of California], where 1 in every 10 people is an illegal alien.”
Both sides said the region’s diverse demographics support their view of the law. In an application to join the suit, Los Angeles and 20 other Southern California municipalities argued that “half the population of the Central District” now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion.
Roughly 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by the order, and almost as many speak a language other than English at home.
Sauer also questioned whether the plaintiffs who sued had standing because they were unlikely to be arrested again. That argument was the subject of sharp and extended questioning in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ultimately rejected it.
“Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location,” the panel wrote in its July 28 opinion denying the stay.
One plaintiff was stopped twice in the span of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat” that he or any of the others could be stopped again, the 9th Circuit said.
Days after that decision, heavily armed Border Patrol agents sprang from the back of a Penske movers truck, snatching workers from the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot in apparent defiance of the courts.
Immigrants rights advocates had urged the justices to not intervene.
“The raids have followed an unconstitutional pattern that officials have vowed to continue,” they said. Ruling for Trump would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
The judge’s order had applied in an area that included Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
“Every Latino should be concerned, every immigrant should be concerned, every person should be concerned,” Alfonso Barragan, a 62-year-old U.S. citizen, said Monday on his way into one of the L.A. Home Depots repeatedly hit by the controversial sweeps. “They’re allowing the [federal immigration agents] to break the law.”
Savage reported from Washington and Sharp from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Ruben Vives in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
The Trump administration has moved to lay off more than 500 employees who work for the federally funded network Voice of America, which provides global reporting in places with restricted press freedom.
In March, Trump officials first attempted to close down some of the organization’s newsrooms. But Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called for the network’s restoration last April, citing a law that requires the Voice of America broadcast to be continued.
Despite the ruling, Kari Lake, the acting chief executive of Voice of America’s oversight agency, posted on social media on Friday evening that 532 government positions were eliminated.
Before the downsizing, Voice of America was responsible for broadcasting news in 49 languages to 360 million people every week, including in Russia and China. Now, the network only airs programming in four languages: Persian, Mandarin, Dari and Pashto.
The layoffs “will likely improve [the agency’s] ability to function and provide the truth to people across the world who live under murderous Communist governments and other tyrannical regimes,” wrote Lake on X.
Most of the 1,300 Voice of America journalists had already been fired or remained on paid leave prior to these layoffs. Only 100 journalists and other staff members remain employed by the organization.
After being asked by the remaining employees to ensure the administration was in line with his April ruling, Lamberth found that they appeared to be noncompliant.
Earlier this week, he ordered Lake to provide sworn testimony at a deposition and threatened to hold her in contempt for going against court orders. He also blocked the administration from firing Voice of America’s Director Michael Abramowitz, the day before these layoffs were announced.
Frank McCourt will have to pursue his proposed Dodger Stadium gondola without legislation that would have limited potential legal challenges to the project.
After The Times reported on the legislation, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council publicly opposed it, asking a state Assembly committee to strip the language that would have benefited the gondola project or kill the bill entirely.
On Friday, the committee stripped the language and moved ahead with the remainder of the bill, which is designed to expedite transit projects in California. Under the now-removed language, future legal challenges to certain Los Angeles transit projects would have been limited to 12 months.
The language of the bill did not cite any specific project, but a staff report called the gondola proposal “one project that would benefit.”
A court fight over Metro’s approval of the environmental impact report for the project is at 17 months and counting.
In a letter to state legislators in which she shared the council resolution opposing the language in question, City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez said the language would amount to “carve outs” from a worthy bill in order to ease challenges to “a billionaire’s private project.”
McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, first proposed a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in 2018. The project requires approvals from four public agencies, including the City Council, which is expected to consider the gondola after the completion of a city-commissioned Dodger Stadium traffic study next year.
1 of 2 | A Guaraní Indigenous participant attends an event with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú in May 2024 at the Development Bank of Latin America in Asunción, Paraguay. Photo by Mar Puig/UPI
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay,, Aug. 26 (UPI) — Paraguay unveiled one of the region’s most ambitious cultural preservation projects with the launch of Proyecto Guaraní-Revista Ysyry, a digital archive and bilingual anthology that safeguards more than 14,000 poems, songs and writings in Guaraní, Spanish and Jopará.
Revista Ysyry, a Paraguayan literary magazine that ran from 1942 to 1995, publishing over 20,000 poems and songs in Guaraní, Spanish, and Jopará (a blend of the two languages).
The initiative, launched in 2023 and presented Monday, combines a free online library called Oremba’e, or What Is Ours, with the printed bilingual volumeChe Ñe’ẽ, Che Purahei (“My word, my song”), which includes nearly 200 selected works.
The collection was entrusted to former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay James Cason, a longtime advocate of Guaraní culture.
“Paraguay is the only bilingual country in Latin America,” Cason said. “Everyone speaks Guaraní. It is the soul of the country. Guaraní is Paraguay.”
That is the most widely spoken of the Tupian languages, a family of indigenous tongues once used by native communities across much of South America. Today, it is one of the few spoken broadly, even by people who do not identify as Indigenous, and serves as the first or second language for millions.
According to Paraguay’s 2024 Household Survey, 38.7% of the population over age 5 speaks both Guaraní and Spanish at home, 30% communicate primarily in Guaraní and 28.5% use Spanish. Another 2.4% relies on other languages, such as English, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean or Arabic.
Cason explained that he began to study the language before arriving in Asunción, surprising audiences when he delivered his first speech entirely in Guaraní. He later received a vast archive of works from the daughter of Ysyry magazine’s late editor, who asked him to ensure its preservation.
For 17 years, Cason sought support to protect the material until the Global Peace Foundation and Instituto Patria Soñada agreed to take on the task.
“This is more than music and poetry,” he said. “It is a sociological and historical record of what people were thinking when these works were written.”
Carmen Giménez, director of the Guarani Project and member of Instituto Patria Soñada, stressed that the language’s vitality goes beyond its Indigenous roots.
“Guaraní is spoken by Indigenous and mestizo populations alike, across rural and urban sectors and even among cultural and political elites,” she said. “It has become a unifying element in a diverse society, a symbol of national identity and resilience in the face of historical attempts to sideline it.
“The Paraguayan case is considered exemplary in Latin America. While in countries such as Argentina, Brazil or Chile Indigenous languages became confined to small communities and many risked extinction, in Paraguay, Guarani evolved into a national and co-official language.”
The National Secretariat of Culture has declared the project of cultural interest. Organizers say the archive will give researchers, musicians and new generations unprecedented access to Paraguay’s literary and musical heritage.
Aug. 26 (UPI) — California, Washington, and New Mexico will lose federal funding unless they adopt and enforce English language proficiency requirements for commercial motor vehicle drivers, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced Tuesday.
The three states have 30 days to comply before the department will withhold up to 100% of funding from the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, a press release from the Transportation Department said.
“We have wonderful tools that will make it very difficult for states to do business if they don’t comply,” Duffy said at the press conference.
In May, Duffy signed new guidance for commercial motor vehicle drivers who don’t follow the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s English-language proficiency requirements and will be placed out of service.
“States don’t get to pick and choose which federal safety rules to follow,” Duffy said in the statement. “As we saw with the horrific Florida crash that killed three, when states fail to enforce the law, they put the driving public in danger. Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we are taking aggressive action to close these safety gaps, hold states accountable, and make sure every commercial driver on the road is qualified to operate a 40-ton vehicle.”
Duffy spoke at a press conference where he referenced the Aug. 18 truck crash on the Florida Turnpike in St. Lucie, Fla. The crash killed three people, and it was determined that the driver of the truck didn’t understand English road signs, Duffy said. The driver, Harjinder Singh, 28, is from California. He was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and is being held on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer.
California has not adopted or enforced the law to ensure drivers can speak and understand English, the press release said. Washington and New Mexico have adopted the ELP regulation but are not enforcing it, Duffy said.
President Macron has arrived in the UK ahead of a state banquet at Windsor CastleCredit: Sky News
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His wife Brigitte rejected his offer of a helping hand descending the planeCredit: Sky News
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It comes after a video seemingly showed Brigitte pushing her husband earlier this yearCredit: Sky News
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Body language expert Judi James described Macron’s behaviour as overly familiarCredit: Sky News
Emmanuel and his wife Brigitte have arrived in the UK ahead of tonight’s state banquet at Windsor Castle.
However, footage of the pair arriving suggests there could be tension between them according to body language expert Judi James.
After Emmanuel is safely on solid ground, he turns around to offer his arm to his wife as she descends the stairs from the plane.
Yet Brigitte refuses Emmanuel’s gesture, leaving him awkwardly holding his arm in mid-air.
The pair then begin to greet members of the Royal Family who have been awaiting their arrival.
Judi said: “Macron appeared determined to take a joyfully tactile approach to everyone he met today, with exception of his wife.
She added that Brigitte looked “less charmed by her husband’s attempts at a more tactile approach, refusing his offer of a hand to help as she stepped down from the plane”.
While Brigitte does smile at her husband once she’s by his side, the couple quickly begin greeting their hosts.
Judi said: “His greeting ritual for William was almost intimate enough to suggest he was family.
Kate & William welcome Macron for first UK state visit in 17 years – as thousands gear up for Windsor carriage ride
“He clasped William’s hand for several long seconds, using his left hand to perform a volley of add-on pats and clasps as he did so, each one suggesting close bonding and familiarity.”
After placing his hand over William’s, he then moves it to the prince’s lower arm.
This “intensified the familiarity signals” according to Judi, as Emmanuel moves his hand above William’s elbow before moving it back down to the lower arm.
Emmanuel then moves on to greet Kate, while Brigitte in turn greets William.
In a “creakingly out of date ritual” according to Judi, Emmanuel leans down to kiss the back of Kate’s hand.
Judi said: “This gesture looks gallant but it leaves the woman being kissed with little option but to giggle prettily.”
While Emmanuel leaned down to kiss Kate’s hand, Charles instead raises Brigitte’s hand to his lips, as he “gazes adoringly” Judi said.
Calling back to the rumoured Vietnam slap, Judi said: “Was this the hand she shoved her husband with back in Vietnam?
“If so, Charles was clearly busy charming it into submission.”
In a similarly familial gesture, Emmanuel went on to pat Charles’ upper arm “in a gesture of macho unity”.
The procession precedes tonight’s state banquet in which 160 guests will dine at Windsor Castle to celebrate the relationship between France and Britain.
Princess Kate and Prince William will both be in attendance for the fabulous event.
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Macron leaned over to kiss Kate’s hand in an outdated gestureCredit: Sky News
In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.
Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”
Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”
At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week.
Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes”.
An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park.
So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray?
In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made “where appropriate.”
The whole thing is “flabbergasting,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they’re an integral part of our history.
“If we lose these stories, then we’re in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,” Arguelles said.
Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates “a false reconstruction” of American history.
Trump called out signs that “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration’s zeal to cast “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the “revisionist” history with language that exudes patriotism.
“It all seems pretty Orwellian,” said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park.
Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, “Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,” someone added a placard that reads, “Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.”
Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society.
“Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,” Moore wrote.
From Shakespeare’s eloquent soliloquies to Gen Z’s rapid-fire abbreviations, language is evolving as quickly as the world itself. Driven by social media, globalisation, and shifting cultural norms, the way we speak is constantly being rewritten. We explore how emerging linguistic trends reflect how younger generations connect with their world, and whether these changes threaten native languages and cultural identities.
Presenter: Stefanie Dekker
Guests: Hayat al-Khatib – Professor of applied linguistics, Arab Open University – Lebanon Jonas Fine Tan – Linguistics student, Oxford University Oliver Carter – Linguistics content creator
This sacred mask is etched with symbols of Sona, a sophisticated and now rarely used writing system
A wooden hunters’ toolbox inscribed with an ancient writing system from Zambia has been making waves on social media.
“We’ve grown up being told that Africans didn’t know how to read and write,” says Samba Yonga, one of the founders of the virtual Women’s History Museum of Zambia.
“But we had our own way of writing and transmitting knowledge that has been completely side-lined and overlooked,” she tells the BBC.
It was one of the artefacts that launched an online campaign to highlight women’s roles in pre-colonial communities – and revive cultural heritages almost erased by colonialism.
Another intriguing object is an intricately decorated leather cloak not seen in Zambia for more than 100 years.
“The artefacts signify a history that matters – and a history that is largely unknown,” says Yonga.
“Our relationship with our cultural heritage has been disrupted and obscured by the colonial experience.
“It’s also shocking just how much the role of women has been deliberately removed.”
Women’s History Museum Zambia
Samba Yonga holding the wooden hunters’ toolbox in one of the beautifully photographed images posted on social media for the Frame project
But, says Yonga, “there’s a resurgence, a need and a hunger to connect with our cultural heritage – and reclaim who we are, whether through fashion, music or academic studies”.
“We had our own language of love, of beauty,” she says. “We had ways that we took care of our health and our environment. We had prosperity, union, respect, intellect.”
A total of 50 objects have been posted on social media – alongside information about their significance and purpose that shows that women were often at the heart of a society’s belief systems and understanding of the natural world.
The images of the objects are presented inside a frame – playing on the idea that a surround can influence how you look at and perceive a picture. In the same way that British colonialism distorted Zambian histories – through the systematic silencing and destruction of local wisdom and practices.
The Frame project is using social media to push back against the still-common idea that African societies did not have their own knowledge systems.
The objects were mostly collected during the colonial era and kept in storage in museums all over the world, including Sweden – where the journey for this current social media project began in 2019.
She did – and when he asked her what country she was from, Yonga was surprised to hear him say that the museum had a lot of Zambian artefacts.
“It really blew my mind, so I asked: ‘How come a country that did not have a colonial past in Zambia had so many artefacts from Zambia in its collection?'”
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and foot.
There are close to 650 Zambian cultural objects in the museum, collected over the course of a century – as well as about 300 historical photographs.
Women’s History Museum Zambia
Mulenga Kapwepwe looks at one of 20 pristine leather cloaks in the Swedish archive collected during an expedition between 1911 and 1912
When Yonga and her virtual museum co-founder Mulenga Kapwepwe explored the archives, they were astonished to find the Swedish collectors had travelled far and wide – some of the artefacts come from areas of Zambia that are still remote and hard to reach.
The collection includes reed fishing baskets, ceremonial masks, pots, a waist belt of cowry shells – and 20 leather cloaks in pristine condition collected during a 1911-1912 expedition.
They are made from the skin of a lechwe antelope by the Batwa men and worn by the women or used by the women to protect their babies from the elements.
On the fur outside are “geometric patterns, meticulously, delicately and beautifully designed”, Yonga says.
There are pictures of the women wearing the cloaks, and a 300-page notebook written by the person who brought the cloaks to Sweden – ethnographer Eric Van Rosen.
He also drew illustrations showing how the cloaks were designed and took photographs of women wearing the cloaks in different ways.
“He took great pains to show the cloak being designed, all the angles and the tools that were used, and [the] geography and location of the region where it came from.”
The Swedish museum had not done any research on the cloaks – and the National Museums Board of Zambia was not even aware they existed.
So Yonga and Kapwepwe went to find out more from the community in the Bengweulu region in north-east of the country where the cloaks came from.
“There’s no memory of it,” says Yonga. “Everybody who held that knowledge of creating that particular textile – that leather cloak – or understood that history was no longer there.
“So it only existed in this frozen time, in this Swedish museum.”
Women’s History Museum Zambia
The Swedish collection includes 300 historical photographs, including this one of women wearing leather cloaks
One of Yonga’s personal favourites in the Frame project is Sona or Tusona, an ancient, sophisticated and now rarely used writing system.
It comes from the Chokwe, Luchazi and Luvale people, who live in the borderlands of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yonga’s own north-western region of Zambia.
Geometric patterns were made in the sand, on cloth and on people’s bodies. Or carved into furniture, wooden masks used in the Makishi ancestral masquerade – and a wooden box used to store tools when people were out hunting.
The patterns and symbols carry mathematical principles, references to the cosmos, messages about nature and the environment – as well as instructions on community life.
The original custodians and teachers of Sona were women – and there are still community elders alive who remember how it works.
They are a huge source of knowledge for Yonga’s ongoing corroboration of research done on Sona by scholars like Marcus Matthe and Paulus Gerdes.
“Sona’s been one of the most popular social media posts – with people expressing surprise and huge excitement, exclaiming: ‘Like, what, what? How is this possible?'”
The Queens in Code: Symbols of Women’s Power post includes a photograph of a woman from the Tonga community in southern Zambia.
She has her hands on a mealie grinder, a stone used to grind grain.
National Museums of World Cultures
This archive photo shows a grinding stone used by Tonga women that would go on to used as a gravestone
Researchers from the Women’s History Museum of Zambia discovered during a field trip that the grinding stone was more than just a kitchen tool.
It belonged only to the woman who used it – it was not passed down to her daughters. Instead, it was placed on her grave as a tombstone out of respect for the contribution the woman had made to the community’s food security.
“What might look like just a grinding stone is in fact a symbol of women’s power,” Yonga says.
It is conducting research in communities and creating an online archive of items that have been taken out of Zambia.
“We’re trying to put together a jigsaw without even having all the pieces yet – we’re on a treasure hunt.”
A treasure hunt that has changed Yonga’s life – in a way that she hopes the Frame social media project will also do for other people.
“Having a sense of my community and understanding the context of who I am historically, politically, socially, emotionally – that has changed the way I interact in the world.”
Penny Dale is a freelance journalist, podcast and documentary-maker based in London
EastEnders star Jamie Borthwick has been suspended by the BBC after using a slur against people with disabilities on the set of Strictly Come Dancing.
The offensive remark was made last November during filming for the BBC dance show’s flagship Blackpool week, the Sun on Sunday reported.
The BBC said his language was “entirely unacceptable and in no way reflects the values or standards we hold and expect”.
The newspaper said that Borthwick, who plays Jay Brown – a key long-running character on the soap – apologised for “any offence and upset”.
BBC News has approached his representatives for a comment.
Disability charity Scope said Borthwick should reflect on what he said and educate himself.
“We hope he takes the opportunity to get to know the reality of disabled people’s lives,” said the organisation’s media manager Warren Kirwan.
In his statement to the Sun on Sunday, Borthwick said: “I want to apologise sincerely and wholeheartedly for the words I used in the video showing my reaction to making it through Blackpool week on Strictly.”
He added: “It is no excuse, but I did not fully understand the derogatory term I used and its meaning.
“That is on me completely.
“Now I am aware, I am deeply embarrassed to have used the term and directed it in the way I did.”
Borthwick rose to fame for his portrayal of Jay Brown (previously Mitchell) in BBC soap EastEnders.
He has starred in it since 2006, making him one of the longest-serving actors on the show.
He has won a British Soap Award for best dramatic performance from a young actor, and an Inside Soap Award for best actor.
The 30-year-old took part in the latest series of Strictly, where he was paired with professional dancer Michelle Tsiakkas.
It marked a return to the ballroom for him, after he won the 2023 Christmas special.
He made it through to Blackpool week – seen as a key milestone in the contest – but was voted off later in November, making him the ninth celebrity to leave the show.
California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home.
The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts.
In a letter sent to Brendan Carr, the Republican chair of the FCC, Barragán (D-San Pedro) expressed “deep concern” that the FCC under the Trump administration has delayed enabling multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts for severe natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
“This is about saving lives,” Barragán said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve got about 68 million Americans that use a language other than English and everybody should have the ability to to understand these emergency alerts. We shouldn’t be looking at any politicization of alerts — certainly not because someone’s an immigrant or they don’t know English.”
Multilingual emergency alerts should be in place across the nation, Barragán said. But the January Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires served as a reminder that the need is particularly acute in Los Angeles.
Not only does L.A. have a significant risk of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, and earthquakes, but the sprawling region is home to a diverse immigrant population, some of whom have limited English proficiency.
“When you think about it, in California we have wildfires, we’re always on earthquake alert,” Barragán said. “In other parts of the country, it could be hurricanes or tornadoes — we just want people to have the information on what to do.”
Four months ago, the FCC was supposed to publish an order that would allow Americans to get multilingual alerts
In October 2023, the FCC approved rules to update the federal emergency alert system by enabling Wireless Emergency Alerts to be delivered in more than a dozen languages — not just English, Spanish and sign language — without the need of a translator.
Then, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed templates for critical disaster alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the US. In January, the commission declared a “major step forward” in expanding alert languages when it issued a report and order that would require commercial mobile service providers to install templates on cellphones within 30 months of publication of the federal register.
“The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family need to stay safe,” then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a January statement.
But shortly after, Trump took control of the White House. Under the chairmanship of Brendan Carr, the commission has yet to publish the January 8 Report and Order in the Federal Register — a critical step that triggers the 30-month compliance clock.
“This delay is not only indefensible but dangerous,” Barragán wrote in a letter to Carr that was signed by nearly two dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. “It directly jeopardizes the ability of our communities to receive life-saving emergency information in the language they understand best.”
Barragán noted that Carr previously supported the push for multilingual alerts when he was a member of the commission, before taking over leadership.
“Your failure to complete this ministerial step — despite having supported the rule itself — has left this life-saving policy in limbo and significantly delayed access to multilingual alerts for millions of Americans,” she wrote.
Asked by The Times what explained the delay, Barragán said her office had been told that Trump’s regulatory freeze prohibited all federal agencies, including the FCC, from publishing any rule in the Federal Register until a designated Trump official is able to review and approve it.
“It’s all politics,” she said. “We don’t know why it’s stuck there and why the administration hasn’t moved forward, but it seems, like, with everything these days, they’re waiting on the president’s green light.”
Barragán also noted that multilingual alerts helped first responders.
“If you have a community that’s supposed to be evacuated, and they’re not evacuating because they don’t know they’re supposed to evacuate, that’s only going to hurt first responders and emergency crews,” she said. “So I think this is a safety issue all around, not just for the people receiving it.”
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based groups that serves the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in Los Angeles, told The Times the FCC’s failure to push alerts in more languages represented a “real dereliction of duty.”
Over half a million Asian Americans across L.A. County are classified as Limited English Proficiency, with many speaking primarily in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, she noted.
“President Trump and many members of his administration have made clear they plan to go on the attack against immigrants,” Kulkarni said. “If this makes the lives of immigrants easier, then they will stand in its way.”
During the January L.A. fires, Kulkarni said, residents complained that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish. More than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants who lived within four evacuation zones — Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes — need language assistance.
“There were community members who didn’t realize until they were evacuated that the fire was so close to them, so they had little to no notice of it,” Kulkarni said. “Really, it can mean life or death in a lot of cases where you don’t get the information, where it’s not translated in a city and county like Los Angeles.”
Community members ended up suffering not just because of the fires themselves, Kulkarni said, but because of federal and local officials’ failure to provide alerts in languages every resident can understand.
“It is incumbent that the alerts be made available,” she said. “We need those at local, state and federal levels to do their part so that individuals can survive catastrophic incidents.”
Marking an extraordinary reversal of fortune, including stints in prison and house arrest during years of clandestine work when he was forbidden by authorities from directing, Iran’s Jafar Panahi triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, winning the event’s top award, the Palme d’Or, for “It Was Just an Accident.”
Appearing to bask in the vindication, Panahi clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back seated in sunglasses, savoring the moment while those around him stood in an ovation.
“It Was Just an Accident,” a tense drama of retribution about a torturer’s abduction by his victims, will be released in 2025 on an as-yet-unannounced date by Neon, the distributor that can now claim an unprecedented six-Palme winning streak, after 2019’s “Parasite,” 2021’s “Titane,” 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness,” 2023’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and 2024’s “Anora” all prevailed. (There was no festival held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Through a translator, Panahi accepted his award humbly and spoke to the universal impulse to make art. “We don’t know why we do it,” he said. “It’s something I watch my small children do. They sing and dance before they can speak. But it’s another language. It could be a language of unification.”
This year’s Cannes jury was chaired by the veteran French star Juliette Binoche, who deliberated with a group sourced from several countries and disciplines. Jury members included the American actors Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, India’s Payal Kapadia (director of “All We Imagine as Light”) and Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo.
Cannes’ runner-up award, the Grand Prix, went to “Sentimental Value,” a domestic drama about a family of artists directed by Norway’s Joachim Trier, who broke through in 2021 with “The Worst Person in the World,” which earned two Oscar nominations.
The festival’s Jury Prize — essentially third place — was shared by two movies: Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” and Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling.” Ties are not unusual in this category; they’ve occurred as recently as 2022 and as far back as 1957, when Cannes honored both Ingmar Berman’s “The Seventh Seal” and Andrzej Wajda’s “Kanał.”
Taking both the directing prize and the award for best actor was Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” a Brazilian crime thriller set in 1977 starring Wagner Maura (“Civil War”). In the hotly contested category of best actress, where on-the-ground predictions varied between Jennifer Lawrence (“Die, My Love), Elle Fanning (“Sentimental Value”) and Zoey Deutch (“Nouvelle Vague”), Nadia Melliti pulled off an upset for her turn in “The Little Sister,” about a French Algerian teen living in Paris and coming out to her Muslim family.
