George Osborne Says There Is ‘No Prospect’ of Boris Johnson Becoming PM Again

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There is “no prospect” of Boris Johnson ever becoming prime minister again, George Osborne has said.

The former chancellor said the civil war inside the Tory Party “has ended” because Johnson is now fighting to even remain as an MP.

The ex-prime minister is waiting for the privilege committee’s verdict on whether he misled the Commons over lockdown-busting parties inside 10 Downing Street.

On the Andrew Neil Show on Channel 4, Osborne also praised Rishi Sunak for improving the Conservatives’ fortunes since taking over as PM from Liz Truss and said they now had a chance of winning the next election.

Speaking after an interview with safeguarding minister Sarah Dines, Osborne said: “I think things are much better for [Sunak’s] administration at the end of this series of this show than they were when we started at the beginning of the year.

″Not least because the internal rebellion has ended in the Tory Party.

“You were asking the minister about Boris Johnson – there’s no prospect of him coming back. He’s battling to stay in the House of Commons itself.”

Johnson gave a fiery appearance in front of the privileges committee last month during which he admitted he did mislead the Commons, but insisted his comments were made “in good faith” after being assured by his advisers that no parties had taken place.

An interim report by the committee earlier this month said it should have been “obvious” to him that lockdown rules were broken.

If the committee recommends that Johnson be suspended from parliament for at leats 10 days, and the Commons votes for it, he would face a recall petition and potentially a by-election in his Uxbridge seat.

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Man Who Sued Gwyneth Paltrow Over Ski Crash Says Trial Was ‘Absolutely Not’ Worth It

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The retired optometrist who lost a lawsuit against Gwyneth Paltrow over a ski collision has admitted that he has regrets about suing.

Terry Sanderson had accused the Oscar-winning actor and lifestyle mogul of crashing into him on the slopes of Utah’s upscale Deer Valley Resort in 2016.

He said the alleged hit-and-run left him seriously injured, and initially sought $3 million in damages (£2.43 million), which was later reduced to $300,000 (around £243,000).

Paltrow, for her part, said that Sanderson had actually skied into her.

Terry Sanderson, left, and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Terry Sanderson, left, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Rick Bowmer/AP Photo

Earlier this week, a Park City jury sided with Paltrow, who had countersued Sanderson for only one dollar and the payment of her legal fees.

After the trial, Sanderson told reporters that he was “very disappointed” in the verdict. When reporters asked whether the ordeal of the highly publicised litigation – which included scrutiny of his medical history and media mockery – was “worth it,” he had a definitive answer: “Absolutely not.”

“I joked about dating sites, right?” Sanderson said, referring to earlier comments he made about how the trial would make online dating difficult. “It’s like, I’m going to be on the internet forever.”

He also shut down a suggestion from Extra host Billy Bush about appearing on a reality show.

“I don’t need that,” Sanderson responded.

He did, however, praise Paltrow as being “very kind” at the conclusion of the trial, when she exited the courtroom and whispered to him, “I wish you well.”

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This is your brain on everyday life

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A new study from a Washington University researcher offers fresh insights into how the brain goes to great lengths to processes and remember everyday events.

Zachariah Reagh, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and co-author Charan Ranganath of the University of California, Davis, used functional MRI scanners to monitor the brains of subjects watching short videos of scenes that could have come from real life. These included men and women working on laptops in a cafe or shopping in a grocery store.

“They were very ordinary scenes,” Reagh said. “No car chases or anything.”

The research subjects then immediately described the scenes with as much detail as they could muster. The mundane snippets led to intriguing findings, including that different parts of the brain worked together to understand and remember a situation.

Networks in the front part of the temporal lobe, a region of the brain long known to play an important role in memory, focused on the subject regardless of their surroundings. But the posterior medial network, which involves the parietal lobe toward the back of the brain, paid more attention to the environment. Those networks then sent information to the hippocampus, Reagh explained, which combined the signals to create a cohesive scene.

Researchers had previously used very simple objects and scenarios — such as a picture of an apple on a beach — to study the different building blocks of memories, Reagh said. But life isn’t so simple, he said. “I wondered if anyone had done these types of studies with dynamic real-word situations and, shockingly, the answer was no.”

The new study suggests that the brain makes mental sketches of people that can be transposed from one location to another, much like an animator can copy and paste a character into different scenes. “It may not seem intuitive that your brain can create a sketch of a family member that it moves from place to place, but it’s very efficient,” he said.

Some subjects could recall the scenes in the café and grocery store more completely and accurately than others. Reagh and Ranganath found that those with the clearest memories used the same neural patterns when recalling scenes that they used while watching the clips. “The more you can bring those patterns back online while describing an event, the better your overall memory,” he said.

At this time, Reagh said, it’s unclear why some people seem more adept than others at reproducing the thought patterns needed to access memory. But it’s clear that many things can get in the way. “A lot can go wrong when you try to retrieve a memory,” he said.

Even memories that seem crisp and vivid may not actually reflect reality. “I tell my students that your memory is not a video camera. It doesn’t give you a perfect representation of what happened. Your brain is telling you a story,” he said.

Reagh is one of the Washington University faculty members involved in the research cluster “The Storytelling Lab: Bridging Science, Technology, and Creativity,” part of the Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures. Led by Jeff Zacks, chair of the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, with Ian Bogost and Colin Burnett, the Storytelling Lab explores the psychology and neurology of narratives.

In future, Reagh plans to study the brain activity and memory of people watching more complicated stories.

“The Storytelling Lab fits perfectly with the scientific questions that I find most exciting,” Reagh said. “I want to understand how the brain creates and remembers narratives.”

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Jennifer Aniston Has Priceless Reaction After Learning How Old Ben From Friends Is Now

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Jennifer Aniston could not quite believe it when she was told how old the actors who played Ben in Friends are now.

The Rachel Green actor had a priceless reaction to the revelation during a recent interview alongside her Murder Mystery 2 co-star Adam Sandler.

Twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse shared the role of Ross Geller’s son in the sitcom that made a worldwide name of Jennifer.

The topic of the twins came up during a chat with Access Hollywood this week, as Adam had also once shared the screen with them in the 1999 film Big Daddy.

Adam joked: “I set the table for the kids to hop on Friends. That was one thing that Jen said when I first met her: ‘Would you please break in the children for us?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you got it.’”

“You did, and now look at them,” Jennifer replied.

The interviewer then brought up comments made by Cole in 2021, admitting he found working on Friends difficult because of a huge crush he had on Jennifer.

“He was so little?” a confused Jennifer said.

“They’re 30 now,” the interviewer then revealed.

Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston discover Cole and Dylan Sprouse's age
Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston discover Cole and Dylan Sprouse’s age

Access Hollywood/YouTube

Jennifer was visibly stunned, as both her and Adam exclaimed: “What?!”

“No! No, they’re not,” Jen said, adding: “Wow, that’s so crazy.”

“That’s hilarious,” Adam said.

Jennifer was equally as stunned earlier this month when she was reunited with another child actor from the show, 27 years after she made a guest appearance.

Watch Jennifer and Adam’s full interview with Access Hollywood below…

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