Day: July 27, 2025

Sunday’s England v Spain match set to be most-watched women’s football match in UK history, benefiting food, drink and hospitality industries

The climax of the exhilarating women’s Euros, as the Lionesses attempt to atone for their loss to Spain at the World Cup, is poised to be the most-watched women’s football match in UK history with the tournament providing a more than £800m boost to supermarkets, pubs and retailers.

With Sunday’s showdown aired on both ITV and the BBC, and their respective streaming services, TV industry executives expect that, with the help of a family-friendly 5pm kick-off time, viewing will eclipse the 14.8 million peak audience when England lost 1-0 to Spain in Sydney two years ago, if the match is close.

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Investigation finds one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities benefited from transatlantic slavery and was haven for white supremacist theories

The University of Edinburgh, one of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious educational institutions, played an “outsized” role in the creation of racist scientific theories and greatly profited from transatlantic slavery, a landmark inquiry into its history has found.

The university raised the equivalent of at least £30m from former students and donors who had links to the enslavement of African peoples, the plantation economy and exploitative wealth-gathering throughout the British empire, according to the findings of an official investigation seen by the Guardian.

The university had explicitly sought donations from graduates linked to transatlantic slavery to help build two of its most famous buildings, Old College on South Bridge in the 1790s and the old medical school near Bristo Square in the 1870s.

The donations were equivalent to approximately £30m in today’s prices, or the higher figure of £202m based on the growth of wages since they were received, and as much as £845m based on economic growth since then.

The university had at least 15 endowments derived from African enslavement and 12 linked to British colonialism in India, Singapore and South Africa, and 10 of those were still active and had a minimum value today of £9.4m.

The university holds nearly 300 skulls gathered in the 1800s from enslaved and dispossessed people by phrenologists in Edinburgh who wrongly believed skull shape determined a person’s character and morals.

Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students were Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh’s status as a global institution.

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One of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities is reviewing whether to launch divestment drive and drop antisemitism definition

The University of Edinburgh is considering whether to unadopt an internationally recognised definition of antisemitism that critics say inhibits freedom of speech on the subject of Israel and Palestine.

Edinburgh, one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities, is also considering whether to divest from companies accused of enabling alleged human rights violations by Israel.

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Director ‘heartbroken’ after 2013 film about doomed romance between Hindu man and Muslim woman altered without his knowledge

An Indian film company is rereleasing a 2013 romantic drama with an alternate artificial intelligence ending without the involvement of its director, in what could be the first instance of its kind in global cinema.

Raanjhanaa, a Hindi-language film about the doomed romance between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, will return to cinemas on 1 August under its Tamil-language title Ambikapathy. The film’s original tragic ending will be replaced by a “happy” one.

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