Love island theory

As the days begin to get shorter, the nights fall earlier, and the approach of ITV ’s Dancing On Ice hastens, another name has been added to the link up of celebrities skaters expected to take part in the next season.

And this time, a Love Island legend has been flouted as one to the dozen or so contestants expected to take to the rink come January. Amber Davies was a winner of the ITV2 reality romance show back in 2017 – when she scooped the top prize alongside Kem Cetinay, who himself competed on Dancing On Ice in 2018.

According to reports, 26-year-old Amber will be donning her finest sequins and pulling on her skates to take part in the upcoming sixteenth season of the long-running winter sport reality competition. And the star – who has carved out an impressive career as a West End stage performer – reportedly intends to win the ice skating show.

A source told The Sun: “Amber would be a real coup for the show – she’s an amazing performer, so she’s bound to be a natural on the ice and sure to be one to watch. After Love Island, she had to work really hard to be taken seriously on the stage and she proved any doubters wrong.”

The source added: “Amber is a perfectionist, and used to putting in long hours rehearsing for the stage, so she’d definitely have her eye on the prize.” So far, just two celebrities have been officially confirmed for the forthcoming new season.

Professional boxer Ricky Hatton, 44, was the first star to be confirmed for the new season. Discussing his excitement about taking part, he said during an appearance on This Morning : “If I can hold my nerve in the boxing ring, I should be able to hold my nerve in the ice rink.”

Actress, singer & television presenter Claire Sweeney, 52, was the second star to be confirmed for the show. She said: “I’m really looking forward to going to an ice rink with my son and actually being able to skate and not have to use the penguins they give you to help you stay upright!

“I’ve had to wear my boots around the house… I haven’t stepped on the ice yet. I am stepping into the unknown here. I don’t know how I will feel. But I am very excited.”

Claire added: “I’m nervous and excited about doing it.” A string of other stars have been rumoured as taking part in the show – with chart topping singers and reality stars among those tipped to appear on the ice.

Former S Club 7 singer Hannah Spearitt and ex-Little Mix singer Jess Nelson have been linked to the show. While Gogglebox star Stephen Webb and EastEnders actress Shona McGarty – famous for playing Whitney Dean on the BBC soap – have also been linked to the show.

One person who definitely won’t be appearing on the new season is disgraced host Phillip Schofield . His career imploded earlier this year and all links to ITV were brutally cut when he finally confessed to having an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a much younger male colleague behind the scenes of This Morning and lying about it. He hosted Dancing On Ice alongside Holly Willoughby ever since it was launched in2006.

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NEIGHBOURS of a restaurant loved by Love Island and Premier League stars have told how the posh customer base is a nuisance.

The Dog and Pickle in Moreton, Essex, has been attracting huge stars like Rod Stewart , Denise van Outen and Olly Murs since opening two years ago.

Landlord Dave Smith rescued the 500-year-old inn and created the flourishing eaterie with a terraced garden.

Customers have also included a host of soccer legends including West Ham star Jarrod Bowen – and Sir Trevor Brooking, Paul Gascoigne and Teddy Sheringham who took part in a celeb fund-raising charity auction.

And next month top soccer boss Harry Redknapp is hosting a three-course charity supper to raise money for a local hospice.

Other diners spotted in the smart pub have been Mark Wright of TOWIE and Michelle Keegan as well as former Love Island contestant Dani Dyer and Joey Essex’s sister Frankie.

The diner may have attracted rave reviews but not everyone in the tiny community is happy.

One neighbour who did not want to be named said: ”It is unbearable at weekends – the music played in the pub garden is very loud and goes on until midnight. You can’t sit outside in your garden because of the racket.”

Another claimed the noise from the restaurant guide Hardens-winning eaterie ruined the tranquillity of the village and affected the peace and quite of the community’s main street lined with a mixture of modern homes and timber-framed properties.

The village is seen a desirable place to live because it is in the middle of the countryside but only half an hour from the middle of London.

Landlord and dad-of-two young children Dave, 38, puts the pub’s growing success down the hard work and the support of his 30-strong staff.

He said:”We have poured everything we have into the this place and it’s proved popular – we do up to 900 covers a week and have got nearly 40,000 Instagram and Facebook followers.

”We have wines that cost £200 and offer a wagyu steak which costs £85 – but we also offer three-course meals for £30..

“We have done a lot here and like to think we have a good relationship with the village. We grow all our own herbs among other things and we must be doing something right – 90% of our reviews on Google are 4.5 out of five.”

Another supportive villager said: “Dave has done wonders with the pub and has also done as lot for the community – he has even helped solve the village primary school’s parking problems buy allowing mums dropping off children to use his car park.”

The Dog and Pickle is opposite the village’s other pub The White Hart where landlady Carla Ince has nothing but praise for the transformation of the “rival” pub.

She said:”The place was an empty eyesore for a couple of years but it has been saved. There had been a few efforts to make it work but none had been successful until  Dave arrived. The pub is a welcome addition to village life and there is no rivalry – what they do is very different from our role as a traditional village local pub..

“I know there have been a couple of issues with noise – and Dave has my sympathy – but if people buy a property close to a pub what do they expect?”

Parish council Chairman Ewan Crosbie said:”Where there have been issues with noise there has been a dialogue with the landlord and he has has dealt with them. He is in compliance with the terms of his licence.”

A spokesperson for The Dog and Pickle said: “The complaints are historic as we have not received any complaints this year and there have been no issues at all with the council and their EHO.”

After the wildfires in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui last month, unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories spread nearly as fast as the flames had. There was the one about the government — in some versions it was the U.S., in others a foreign government — using energy beam weapons to start the fire . Others blamed Oprah, the wealthy media mogul, and falsely claimed she was making a land grab . Still others claimed the fires were a cover-up for military malfeasance.

Lahaina residents told NPR reporters on the ground that the rumors were spreading fear and confusion at a vulnerable time. On a visit to Danilo Andres’ home in the burn zone — miraculously standing after the fires — Andres says there was talk that the homes left standing might be further targeted: “There’s a satellite in the sky, they just pinpoint the house,” he said, explaining the theory. “The rumor’s in the hotel right now, so everybody’s moving out.”

Andres said he didn’t find the rumors credible, “… but I don’t know. What do you guys know?” he asked reporters.

In the absence of clear, reliable information, the rumors grew and cast suspicion on emergency response efforts. They fed into people’s fears that they wouldn’t be able to keep their land or their homes, if they remained, leading some to return to houses in the burn zone, days after the fire — despite warnings from authorities that the air and water may not be safe, and the structures may be compromised.

The rumors sowed discord in the tight-knit community. Longtime Lahaina resident Chris Arnold said his kids were scared of a military takeover based on rumors they had heard online. “The stupid sh** you put out there, these kids believe it,” he says, speaking directly to those creating and spreading rumors from afar. “Grow up, put your g****** phones down, write a check and help us out, or grow a garden — do something proactive instead of making up sh**.”

As communities have to grapple with natural disasters and extreme weather in increasing frequency because of man-made climate change, researchers warn that rumors arising each time in their wake are a force to contend with on their own. While chaos and confusion are common in the wake of disasters, what happened on Maui opens an anecdotal window into the impact of such rumors.

Conspiracy theories grow on social media, with Russia and China in the fray

While people sheltered in hotels on Maui told each other stories and tried to make sense of the changes to their lives, those monitoring online rumors noticed narratives cropping up across social media platforms big and small.

Welton Chang, CEO and co-founder of tech firm Pyrra Technologies, looked at posts on smaller platforms like Truth Social and Gab and saw a lot of unfounded narratives that tap into typical conspiracy themes. “These fires were not natural. They were created by a shadowy cabal of the government and the World Economic Forum and then some celebrities,” says Chang, listing some of the theories.

On the larger social media platforms including X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, Kyle Van Fleet, communications associate at voting rights organization APIAVote, started noticing “a very big response in a conspiratorial way” — through videos meant to debunk those conspiracies, posted by Asian American and Pacific Islander activists and influencers shortly after news of the fire broke.

Among the themes Van Fleet saw were climate denial claims, asserting that the fire had nothing to do with climate change. But he also noticed other kinds of messages spreading.

“There was … a niche narrative that this was the beginning of turning Maui into a smart city,” Van Fleet says, referring to a conspiracy theory that claims efforts intended to reduce traffic and increase walkability are actually a plot by governments to use climate change as a pretext to turn cities into “open air prisons.”

Conspiratorial narratives like these once stayed confined to smaller, fringe social media sites a while before they spread to larger platforms. Now, they rapidly gain an audience on platforms like X — renamed from Twitter — after Elon Musk took over and most of its staff working on content moderation left or were laid off.

Foreign actors also quickly jumped into the mix. Russian state propaganda amplified home-grown criticisms of the disaster response like those of former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who argued that “Ukraine matters to Biden more than Hawaii.”

Accounts that were part of influence operations tied to the Chinese government spread the false narrative that a meteorological weapon was responsible for the fire, researchers from four separate organizations — Recorded Future, Microsoft, NewsGuard and the University of Maryland — found.

The online blitz of falsehoods about the fire has mostly died down, though the more conspiratorial narratives continue to linger on the fringe, Van Fleet says.

Researchers who regularly track rumors during disasters say that the theories emerging online about Maui aren’t surprising. Tara Kirk Sell, an associate professor at John Hopkins Center for Health Security, has tracked rumors emerging from public health emergencies dating back to the Ebola outbreak in 2017.

“The thing that we learned was it wasn’t really about Ebola,” Sell says. “The topic of Ebola is a vehicle for all these other social, political or financial goals.”

During a recent hearing, U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, blamed Russia and China for spreading disinformation to discourage residents from seeking help from the federal government and to paint the federal response in a negative light. But in a sign of how well those narratives can take hold in a polarized political environment, U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., amplified baseless allegations of a government cover-up of the fires on the far-right outlet Newsmax .

Still, researchers say domestic actors remain the bigger worry. The Chinese influence operation was quite small, according to NewsGuard. Researchers at Recorded Future wrote that “engagement with Russian state-funded media sources is almost certainly less prevalent than organic engagement with US domestic media or prominent social media personalities.”

Rumor response is part of disaster response

Since the 1990s, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has listed rumor monitoring control as part of emergency response and now hosts a web page addressing some of those rumors specific to the Maui fire. One of them is, ” If I apply for disaster assistance, FEMA may confiscate my property or land if they deem it unlivable. ”

“FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership of your property or land,” the web page states.

FEMA, whose own personnel became subject to rumors related to the fire, declined NPR’s request for an interview but pointed people toward local community leaders and emergency managers for accurate disaster-related information.

It’s difficult to tease out how rumors in the online and offline worlds cross-pollinate and to quantify how much rumors affect behavior, though there are documented effects.

At the height of the COVID pandemic, as false narratives around new vaccines swirled, surveys showed that false narratives deterred some people from getting shots. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, researchers tracked how rumors such as “immigration status is checked at shelters” gained traction on social media, as reporters on the ground noted how undocumented immigrants who were already fearful of immigration enforcement activities hesitated to go to shelters or to ask for federal assistance.

Rumors that have staying power often contain kernels of truth. Hawaii was forcibly colonized by the U.S. in the 19th century — a history the U.S. government officially apologized for in the 1990s . Lahaina, which was ravaged by the fires, was once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Prior to the fires, it was considered prime real estate, and longtime residents have long been anxious about real estate development. Today, Native Hawaiians are still waging legal battles to reclaim their water rights and ancestral land .

Residents have also expressed frustrations with the federal response, describing it as late, disorganized and culturally flat-footed, sometimes getting in the way of local community efforts that filled early support gaps.

Sell says it’s important for the government to lean on trusted messengers in disaster situations when the government itself isn’t trusted, but better communication is only one part of the solution. “It’s not just [saying], ‘You must trust us.’ It’s … showing that you’re trustworthy.”

“I think that we should, for pretty much every disaster in the future, be expecting to see these types of rumors,” Sell says.

Marisa Peñaloza and Jonaki Mehta contributed reporting to this story

Forget counting sheep, as having sex could be the secret to a good night’s sleep .

In fact, as long as you orgasm, you’re in with a good chance of a decent rest – whether with a partner or indulging in a little solo play. It’s been rumoured in the past that getting raunchy can help you to drift off, and we can officially confirm the theory is true.

Up to 75% of people report having better sleep following sex before bedtime. Now it’s also been confirmed it could help to keep you looking younger too.

READ MORE: Saucy toys slashed by 60% – offering people ultimate pleasure at a bargain

Keep up to date with all the latest sex news and tips by Daily Star

After releasing a study on how to maximise our beauty sleep, experts at LOOKFANTASTIC revealed that sex can make us drift off, but only if it’s done right. This includes reaching an orgasm before we can benefit from it.

Group pharmacist, Aruj Javid at LOOKFANTASTIC, said: “Having sex before bedtime not only helps with physical and emotional intimacy with your partner there’s also the beneficial component between sex and sleep that people don’t realise. During passionate sexual intercourse, your body releases oxytocin, a hormone that helps you relax that in turn can make you feel drowsy and help you fall asleep better, especially after experiencing an orgasm or two.

“Hugging, foreplay, kissing cuddling or even a lovely massage by your partner before bedtime can also help release feel-good love hormones and help with your general wellbeing.”

Sometimes relying on sex to reach an orgasm can be a losing battle for many reasons, as the everyday stresses of work and life can occupy your mind and make it harder for you to reach a climax. Sometimes you may also find sexual partners are not on the cards.

Therefore self-pleasure sometimes needs to be used to maximise your sleep, and it’s also important for your own well-being. Masturbating before bed to reach a climax can help your body release the hormones needed for sleep is a great way to maximise your hours asleep, and it’s also a guaranteed way to make sure the job is done right.

Sexual wellness and a positive sex life can have a significant impact on our lives, especially our sleep and relying on natural hormone releases to improve your sleep is important. To find out more you can view the full beauty sleep report , which also delves into the impact of sleep on your health and the best bedtime beauty routines.

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