toxic

SHE’S long been known as one of Towie’s most fiery personalities, but Ella Rae Wise has now broken her silence on a fresh fallout with a co-star – and revealed exactly what’s going on behind the scenes with an ex she once couldn’t be in the same room as.

Speaking to The Sun, the 26-year-old lifted the lid on the real story behind her rocky relationship with former best friend Dani Imbert, addressed another friendship that has quietly crumbled away from the cameras, and explained what it’s actually like filming alongside ex Dan Edgar these days.

When it comes to Dani, Ella insists there was never one big bust-up, but rather a realisation that the loyalty she was giving out wasn’t being returned. 

She said: “I would just say we decided not to be friends anymore. I don’t really know why on her behalf, but for me people always scream loyalty, but when the shoe is on the other foot, loyalty probably isn’t that strong towards me. 

“But I’m the one that needs to be seen to have loyalty everywhere and cut my nose off to spite my face. With this specific friendship, she was okay doing what she wanted to do behind my back with people who didn’t like me. 

“So, it wasn’t a mirrored friendship. It was one-sided is how I feel. With time going on, I think I prepared myself for this… I could see it coming.”

Ella and Dani first became close after Dani joined the show in 2021, quickly forming an inseparable trio alongside Junaid Ahmed that dominated cast trips, nights out and red carpet appearances for the best part of two years. 

Cracks first appeared in early 2023 when Dani admitted on camera to lying to Ella about a secret kiss with co-star Roman Hackett, but the real turning point came later that year during a cast trip to Cyprus, when Ella fell ill and says she was left feeling completely “frozen out“ by both Dani and Junaid. 

Matters were made worse when Dani and Junaid began socialising with Chloe Brockett – Ella’s long-running nemesis on the show – something Ella viewed as the ultimate betrayal, accusing Dani during fiery on-screen rows of being spineless and easily led by Junaid.

The pair did appear to patch things up by March 2024, but Ella admits the relationship never really recovered, and their apparent truce hasn’t lasted. 

In a teaser shared on Towie’s socials with Ella and her co-star Jodie Wells, Ella reflected on a moment where she found herself defending Dani in her absence, saying: “I defended her in a room she wasn’t in with Jonnie… why was I being so nice?” 

Jodie pointed out that Ella had been “really defending Dani… which is really nice considering she wasn’t being that much of a friend to you at that time,” before asking where things stand between them now. 

Ella replied: “I’d say the friendship is probably quite non-existent. I didn’t ever think I’d be in this position with Dani. We’ve fell out before and we always made a pact that we wouldn’t fall out again.”

But it seems the girls have gone back on their word, with Ella adding: “I don’t see where the friendship can go,” while Jodie suggested: “Maybe you’ve outgrown each other.” 

Asked by The Sun whether she and Dani have fallen out again, Ella made her feelings clear, admitting there’s little chance of a reunion this time round. 

The pair have now settled into two firmly separate camps within the cast, with Dani remaining closely aligned with Freddie Bentley, while Ella sticks by her pal Harry Derbidge.

The two groups manage to film together during big cast scenes and parties, but rarely mix on a personal level.

Dani isn’t the only co-star Ella has fallen silent with, though.

She also confirmed she and former best friend Freddie are no longer on speaking terms, telling us bluntly: “No. I’m alright with it, though. I don’t feel any type of way about it.”

Ella and Freddie were close pals long before Freddie officially joined the show and, when he did make his debut, he wasted no time stepping up as one of Ella’s fiercest defenders on screen, backing her throughout her dramatic falling out with Dani and Junaid. 

The two became practically inseparable, filming together constantly and championing one another in the media, but their bond hit a wall during a Towie Christmas special when an explosive row – fuelled by shifting group loyalties and Ella’s closeness with Harry Derbidge, who already had history with Freddie, triggered a complete breakdown in their friendship. 

Freddie later confirmed on GK Barry’s podcast Saving Grace last year that the pair were “not friends” anymore, and while the two briefly appeared to patch things up during a cast trip to Vietnam earlier this year, secondary drama involving Saffron Lempriere and Elma Pazar reignited old tensions, with a frustrated Freddie quitting the trip early and flying home. 

Freddie has since buried the hatchet with Harry but, as Ella’s own words confirm, his friendship with her shows no sign of being repaired heading into the new series.

Dani and Freddie are far from the only names on Ella’s list, either – the star has built up something of a reputation over the years for falling out with those closest to her. 

Her rivalry with Chloe Brockett remains one of her longest-running and most explosive, with the pair’s friendship collapsing not long after they joined the show together in 2019 when Ella began dating Chloe’s ex, Harry Lee – a feud that has seen the two repeatedly clash on camera ever since, each branding the other insincere. 

Her fallout with Junaid also stemmed from that same Cyprus trip, with Ella accusing him of being controlling and toxic and of deliberately turning mutual friends against her. 

Meanwhile her relationship with Amber Turner has been fraught since 2022, when Ella claimed Amber’s then-boyfriend (and her now-ex) Dan Edgar behaved inappropriately towards her on a night out. The feud reignited in 2024 once Amber and Dan split and Ella and Dan struck up a holiday fling of their own while filming in Bali.

Which brings us to the one relationship that, remarkably, appears to be going in a positive direction. 

Despite that turbulent history, Ella insists she and Dan have found a way to move past their issues, telling us: “We’re literally amicable, polite to each other, keep it moving. And it’s easy because we’re in the same group. 

“The boys banter it and break up the awkwardness. It’s been fine. This series has really been a good series for me. I’m feeling comfortable around everyone.”

It’s a far cry from the tension that once defined their dynamic, after Ella and Dan’s relationship first hit headlines in Bali following his split from Amber.

Things later boiled over during the cast trip to Vietnam for season 36 when Courtney Green accused Dan of “flirting” with Ella and being disrespectful to his then girlfriend Chloe Lewis. 

But with their wider friendship group having shifted considerably since then, the pair have settled into a far calmer footing – something Dan himself has previously credited to their mutual closeness with Jodie Wells and James “Diags” Bennewith.

As for her own life away from the group dramas, Ella tells us this series has marked a real turning point in how she feels in herself. 

She said: “It’s been fun. It’s been nice to do different things and have happy moments. This series is so different. So much better. 

“The change is probably how I feel in myself. I think I needed to focus on how I feel in myself to be able to get over things. So, I did that, and yeah, I’m over it!” 

She added that rebuilding her confidence has come from learning to love herself again and leaning on easier, less intense friendships, saying: “I think it’s more finding love for yourself again. That comes in time, doesn’t it… And the friends you have around you. That’s changed.

“I have a lot more easy-going friendships. They’re not hard work. We don’t have to be attached to each other 24/7. We’ve all got our own lives. It’s been good.”

Ella’s newfound sense of stability comes as she’s also settled into a new romance away from the cast, having gone public with new boyfriend Ricky, 34, in early August while on holiday with mutual pals Lorri Haines and Ferne McCann. 

The pair were pictured kissing at Marbella’s luxury Don Carlos Hotel and even sparked marriage rumours after Ella was spotted wearing a gold band.

TOWIE continues on Sunday and Monday every week on ITV2 & ITVX.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Smoke from forest and peatland fires burning across Indonesia has pushed air quality in parts of Malaysian Borneo to hazardous levels, triggering a surge in respiratory illness and forcing the cancellation of outdoor Independence Day celebrations.

The smoke – drifting from fires in Kalimantan in the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo – has settled over the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the same island, for much of August. It has also reached peninsular Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

It is the region’s worst haze episode since 2015, when fires in Indonesia exposed tens of millions of people to toxic smoke and caused more than 500,000 people to suffer respiratory ailments.

On Tuesday, six areas in Sarawak recorded hazardous air quality, with readings above 300 on Malaysia’s Air Pollutant Index. Anything above 100 is considered unhealthy. In Kuching, the state capital, the index hit 407, while in Serian, a town close to the Kalimantan border, it hit 408.

Mia Emylia Hassan, 33, a mother of two in Kuching, said the smell of smoke was inescapable.

“The air here is very thick,” she said. “It smells like smoke, and it’s just white all over.” Visibility from her house, she said, had dropped to about a kilometre, or roughly half a mile. “We have not seen blue sky for over a month,” she said.

The haze arrived in early August, shortly after her 10-month-old daughter came home from the hospital after a lung infection. “She’s not healing properly because her lungs are still developing,” Hassan said. “She’s been on medication this whole month, and she has been coughing and vomiting.”

Twice, the family has had to rush the infant back to the emergency room because she could not breathe.

“It’s a mini heart attack for us every time,” Hassan said.

Asthma cases surge

Malaysia’s Ministry of Health has reported a sharp rise in illness nationwide. During the week of August 23 to 29, asthma cases climbed to 1,811, up from 219 the previous week, the ministry said on Saturday, while conjunctivitis cases also rose to 720, from 146.

In peninsular Malaysia, Karen-Michaela Tan, an asthma patient who lives near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, said that a week after the haze thickened, she was “wheezing audibly” and “breathless when climbing stairs”. The 52-year-old said she needed two nebuliser treatments back to back to stop the wheezing, along with a heavy dose of steroids.

“Doctors are erring on the side of caution when it comes to asthma patients, choosing to up dosages rather than risk a patient being hospitalised for shortness of breath,” she said.

Her house is sealed, and two purifiers run continuously. Still, “I battle throat scratchiness and nasal dryness even with these measures”, she said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc, has activated a Level 3 transboundary haze alert – its highest – for the southern part of the region. The alert signals a high risk of severe cross-border haze. ASEAN cited an increase in fire hotspots and prolonged dry weather, fuelled by an intensifying El Nino weather pattern.

The toxic smoke has forced Sarawak to cancel its outdoor Independence Day celebrations on Monday, and officials warned that worse restrictions could follow. Any area where readings cross 500 will be placed under a local emergency, and all public and private offices will be closed, the deputy premier, Douglas Uggah Embas, told reporters. “Only essential services will be allowed to operate,” he added.

In Kuala Lumpur, where skies were grey for most of the month, the haze thinned enough to reveal blue sky for the first time in a week, just as the Independence Day parade got under way early in the morning.

Schools, too, have been hit hard. Under Ministry of Education rules, outdoor activities are suspended when the index reaches 100, and schools must close at 200. On August 20 and 21, nearly 600 schools in and around Kuching shut, affecting some 200,000 primary and secondary students. And on August 28, 30 more schools in Sarawak closed, keeping more than 4,000 children at home.

This week, schools are closed for the Independence Day holiday.

Youth sport has been affected, too. Yap Kai Jinn, 31, a coach at Square One Football, a Kuala Lumpur academy, said the club had cancelled all training sessions and matches since last week.

“Along with our parents, we decided that it is not healthy; it is not safe for our players to play under these conditions,” he said. “For now, we are looking for an enclosed area to do sessions, and for outdoor, we have to wait and hope that the weather gets better.”

Fires surge in West Kalimantan

The toll of the haze has been far heavier in Indonesia.

The country’s deputy health minister, Dante Saksono Harbuwono, told reporters on Monday that some 13,500 people were treated for respiratory infections in July and August, while about 5.5 million people on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra have been directly exposed to smoke.

Borneo is the world’s third-largest island and is divided between Indonesia, which controls the southern two-thirds as Kalimantan; Malaysia, whose states of Sarawak and Sabah run along the north; as well as the sultanate of Brunei.

According to the Indonesian government, fires between January and July burned more than 200,000 hectares (about 494,000 acres), an area three times the size of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, across Borneo and Sumatra. Nearly 95,000 hectares (about 235,000 acres) burned in July alone.

And despite efforts to control the blazes, the fires continue to surge in parts of Indonesian Borneo.

Hotspots in West Kalimantan nearly doubled on Monday, rising by 3,553 to 7,377, while the number of active fires rose by 88 to 104, and visibility fell below a kilometre, said Berton Panjaitan, an official at Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency. In Central Kalimantan, hotspots declined by 147 to 5,244, while fire spots increased by 16 to 72, he said.

Cities in Kalimantan have recorded hazardous air, too.

Readings in Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan reached 780 on Monday on the air quality index used by IQAir, a Swiss company that monitors pollution data. Pontianak in West Kalimantan reached 593.

The fires are largely set on purpose, analysts say, with plantation companies and smallholders alike burning rainforest and carbon-rich peatland to clear ground for palm oil, farming, and pulp and paper production. The practice is illegal, and Indonesian police said last week that they had arrested 72 people suspected of setting recent fires.

Super El Nino

Researchers warned people in Southeast Asia to brace for a long fire season.

El Nino – the naturally occurring pattern that shifts winds, air pressure and rainfall worldwide – appears headed for “super” strength, said Helena Varkkey, a specialist on transboundary haze at Universiti Malaya.

In Southeast Asia, she said, “the intensifying El Nino means hotter and drier conditions”, so “any fires that happen will have a bigger and longer regional impact”.

Jayaprakash Muralitharan, a Malaysian atmospheric scientist, said the worst was still ahead.

Haze conditions are “going to be severe and longer, because the hot weather started much earlier last year”, he said. “El Nino came in and made conditions drier. Now you have the extreme drying of the peatland.”

And peat can make fires stubborn, he said. What looks extinguished on the surface can smoulder underground for weeks and flare up again, and nothing short of sustained rain will soak the soil enough to put it out.

Until the rains arrive, Muralitharan said, there is little to be done.

“Human intervention now is only a temporary solution. It would go on until end of September or October when the rain comes in. I hope that rain comes in by then.”

Vape pens and other disposable e-cigarettes soon could be illegal in California.

On Wednesday, the state assembly approved Assembly Bill 762, which, if signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will make the battery-powered disposable devices illegal to manufacture, distribute or sell in the state. The bill passed the senate Tuesday.

“We are hopeful the Governor will recognize the threat these devices pose to our communities and that the costs of cleaning up the mess these devices leave are borne by ratepayers,” the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), said in a press release.

The bill targets single-use, battery-embedded electronic cigarettes that contain tobacco products. Cannabis devices are exempt. To be legal under the new law, a vape device must be both refillable (or use replaceable pods) and have a rechargeable battery. Otherwise they couldn’t be sold after Jan. 1, 2028.

Vapes have become a trash plague on streets and beaches and in parks where they leak toxic chemicals such as lead, lithium, cobalt, cadmium, chromium, copper, zinc and nickel as well as microplastics and battery acid.

According to consumer advocacy group CalPIRG, 500,000 disposable vapes are thrown away every day in the U.S. That’s almost 5.8 devices per second.

Vapes use a small, lithium battery to heat liquids such as nicotine for users to inhale. Disposable vapes can be used only a few times before they become useless and have to be discarded.

The vaping industry says the technology saves lives and the cartridges are not nearly as bad a blight as cigarette butts.

Neither the Vapor Technology Assn., the largest industry trade group, nor the American Vapor Manufacturers, an industry group representing independent vapor manufacturers, could be reached for comment.

However, in comments last spring, a spokesman for the manufacturers, Jim McCarthy, said: “Vaping is the single most popular and effective method for Americans to quit smoking cigarettes, and it’s an absolute outrage that states like California are trying to deprive ordinary people of that life-saving product, and no state has driven more people back to combustible cigarettes than California has.”

Research shows while vaping helps more people stop smoking than conventional methods like patches or gum, it is dangerous for youths, young adults and people who don’t already smoke, since the long-term effects remain unknown. The devices deliver addictive nicotine, and the vapors can cause lung and throat irritation. Long-term use is linked to blood vessel and cardiovascular impairment.

In 2021, researchers at the Yale School of Public Health examined the consequences of San Francisco’s 2018 ban on flavored vapes. They found that after the ban took effect, the odds of underage high school students smoking conventional cigarettes more than doubled compared to school districts without a ban.

The study looked at all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and reusable e-cigarettes.

But California’s Department of Public Health does not consider vape a positive quit-smoking method and treats e-cigarettes as a severe public health threat. The department actively works to counter the normalization of vaping, particularly among youth, and has campaigned to discourage young people from taking it up.

State health officials have said they are concerned that the nicotine in modern vape devices is highly addictive and harms adolescent brain development, affecting learning, memory and attention.

E-cigarettes also are a growing cause of fires in waste facilities. Industry analysts have coined the term “the vape effect” to describe this rise in fires, estimating billions of dollars in cumulative damages to the global waste management infrastructure.

When disposable vape cartridges are put in garbage or recycling bins, they can be crushed by garbage trucks and sorting equipment at waste facilities. This can puncture the batteries, causing them to short-circuit, overheat and potentially ignite surrounding materials.

The National Waste & Recycling Assn. (NWRA) and Resource Recycling Systems estimate more than 5,000 fires occur annually at recycling facilities, driven heavily by lithium-ion batteries.

“We don’t let other industries design products with embedded fire hazards and walk away when they fail. Vape companies shouldn’t get a pass either,” said Tony Hackett, a policy associate at Californians Against Waste.

According to the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a national group that advocates for reduced government spending, roughly 2.2 million adults used electronic vapor products across the state in 2022 — a 40.4% increase from the year before.

The California Youth Tobacco Survey found that in 2023, vapes were the most prevalent tobacco product among high school students. It reported that 10% of students in rural areas vape and 6% in nonrural areas.

The governor’s office said it would not comment on the legislation.