3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Battery that does 360 miles, a huge boot for all your needs & three other things to know about new £31k Skoda Elroq SUV
WE tried a prototype of this car back in June.
We liked it.
SuppliedSkoda has finally unwrapped Elroq, a smaller and cheaper electric Enyaq[/caption]
SuppliedThe Elroq features a huge 470-litre boot, with low-loading floor, and reversible boot mat[/caption]
SuppliedThere’s all sorts of tech in here, 13in touchscreen with reversing camera, head-up display, plus lots of responsible materials[/caption]
But it was wrapped like a bicycle under the tree on Christmas morning.
Everyone knew exactly what it was. An SUV. It was pointless trying to disguise it.
Now Skoda has finally unwrapped Elroq, a smaller and cheaper electric Enyaq, and, for some odd reason, its fifth model to end with a “q”.
Kodiaq. Kamiq. Karoq. Enyaq. Elroq. There’s a dinky EV coming in 2026 . . . called Epiq.
All good Scrabble scores, I suppose.
Any road, here’s five things you need to know about Elroq:
PRICE: From £31,500. Which is actually £700 cheaper than a petrol Karoq with an automatic gearbox. Good start.
RANGE: Also good. The 77kWh battery will do up to 360 miles, much like a petrol car.
Even the smallest 52kWh battery will do 230 miles. You might need to recharge once a fortnight.
PRACTICALITY: Which is a Skoda trademark. Huge 470-litre boot, with low-loading floor, and reversible boot mat. One side hard plastic for wet dogs and wellies.
The other side carpet to stop things slipping about. The charging cable is stored in a net under the parcel shelf. Clever.
Even cleverer, the parcel shelf can be lowered and used as a divider between the Friday big shop and pushchairs.
CABIN: Much like an Enyaq, which I like, because it doesn’t feel too much of a leap from petrol to electric like the Volkswagen ID3.
It feels familiar.
There’s all sorts of tech in here, 13in touchscreen with reversing camera, head-up display, plus lots of responsible materials, lots of storage for slurpies and phones and bags and things.
LOOKS: That’s your call. But I quite like it. Elroq is the first car to feature Skoda’s new design direction.
The “tech deck” across the front hides some of the driver-assistance kit the law now demands.
Big on value, big on range, big on space
You might also notice S K O D A written on the lip of the bonnet – and on the steering wheel.
You won’t find a Skoda badge anywhere on this car, apart from on the wheels.
So there you have it. Elroq. Big on value, big on range, big on space.
Big Scrabble score.
SuppliedYou won’t find a Skoda badge anywhere on this car, apart from on the wheels[/caption]
GettyMartin Tyler shocked fans as he made a return to UK screens[/caption]
Tyler brought fans many memorable moments, including the famous Sergio Aguero line as Man City netted late goals to win their first Premier League title in 2011.
The ace’s absence was notable last term, with many lamenting his exit.
His dad even coached him at Almere during a brief spell as the club’s under-21 assistant manager.
The ex-Ajax, Inter Milan and Netherlands forward is best known in England for his time in North London, though.
AlamyMitchel Bergkamp was released by Bromley in June after their promotion to League Two[/caption]
Instagram / @officialdennisbergkampThe Dutch midfielder is the son of Gunners icon Dennis Bergkamp[/caption]
Bergkamp scored 120 goals in 422 appearances during 11 years at Highbury.
During that time, he also won 10 trophies including a trio of Premier League titles.
Since retiring aged 37 in 2006, he has held several coaching roles but has been away from the dugout since leaving Almere in 2019.
GettyBergkamp won three Premier League titles during 11 years in North London[/caption]
3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Watch as Phillip Schofield recounts the exact moment his agent rang to tell him he had been ‘sacked’ from This Morning
PHILLIP Schofield has recounted the exact moment his agent told him he had been ‘let go’ from This Morning.
The 62-year-old had hosted the flagship ITV programme for 21 years before being axed by bosses last year.
Channel 5Phillip Schofield has recounted the exact moment he was ‘sacked’ from This Morning[/caption]
Channel 5The broadcaster had hosted the show for 21 years[/caption]
Phil blames his brother’s conviction for child sex abuse for his axe from This Morning
During the final episode of his Channel 5 show Cast Away, Phil revealed he was apparently sacked for his paedophile brother’s crimes.
Timothy Schofield was found guilty last year of 11 counts of child sex abuse.
Before admitting to his affair with a young runner on This Morning, Schofe claims his agent told him a decision had been made to drop him over the publicity of his brother’s trial.
He said: “That’s it, it’s done. You’re not going back on Monday. What? Because of what?
“I think it’s the publicity though. That’s got nothing to do with me. That has nothing to do with me. Why would I be sacked for something that somebody else did?
“I’ve just been fired. Because of him. Because I was becoming more of a story than the programme. It was better for the show, better for the channel.
“And I agreed to say that I’d resigned because… It would be neater for everybody. I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening with my brother.
I was fired for the bad publicity. For someone else’s crime.
“And the thing is, about a week later, I blew my own wheels off with everything else, because I thought the only way to even begin to put this right for everybody is to do a full mea culpa. I came clean about my affair.
“What people don’t realise is, I wasn’t fired from this morning when I admitted lying. It was before. Because of someone I used to call brother. But that is my last story.”
However, an ITV insider this week rubbished Phil’s claims and branded him a ‘liar’.
They told The Mirror: “Phillip’s new comments are simply untrue, he is lying again.”
“We stood by him through his brother’s court case and he then stepped away when things became too much,” the source said.
“He then admitted himself he had been lying about an affair and he resigned from ITV altogether.
“We didn’t sack him, he lied to us and then he resigned, there is not much else to say and we as a network just want to move on.”
OVER three nights – and three hour-long episodes – Phillip Schofield has been bearing his soul in new Channel 5 show Cast Away.
And it’s basically a chance for the former This Morning host to explain the circumstances that saw him leave the show last year.
To put it mildly, he left under something of a cloud, admitting he’d had a fling with a much younger runner on the programme. But in the C5 show he presents his own versions of events – one which is at odds with the narrative that emerged at the time.
He was portrayed as a man who’d had an “unwise” affair, who’d resigned as a result and had let many of his colleagues down.
But in Cast Away Philip insists he was fired by ITV and not for the affair, but because of the bad publicity that surrounded the crimes of his paedophile brother. He summed it up best when he claimed he’d been “pushed under a bus.”
After watching Cast Away what you’re left with is something rather confusing, however.
Did Philip think he’d done something wrong by having the fling with the runner, or not? For example, he said he wouldn’t have been slammed for it quite so much if it were a heterosexual fling.
He said he: “would have received a pat on the back for having an affair with a woman.” This infers that the only thing wrong with it was that it was a same sex fling. So why does he also say: “I will be forever sorry. I screwed up. I made a mistake.”
The answer, I suspect, is that the whole affair was a murky business. There were so many blurred lines around appropriateness, professionalism and honesty.
The only firm conclusion you can draw from the show is that Phillip himself isn’t ENTIRELY sure to what extent He was guilty of wrongdoing.
Amid the confusion, what will the viewing public think? I suspect that this will leave those who disliked Phillip to feel even more suspicious of him.
Those who backed him, will feel reassured too. But those who still aren’t sure what to think will be none-the-wiser – and I’m not sure if that’s what Phillip would have wanted.
3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Learnmore Jonasi set for Theatre in the Park bow before international tour
HARARE - Fresh from his stint on America’s Got Talent, Zimbabwean comedian Learnmore Jonasi is set to thrill his local fans when he performs at Theatre in the Park at Harare Gardens on Thursday evening.
3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Antioch mayor now seeks $500k to curb surge of gun violence
ANTIOCH — Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe now says his city needs $500,000 in funding to seek longterm assistance from outside law enforcement agencies to deal with surging gun violence in the Sycamore corridor. Last week, Hernandez-Thorpe said he would ask the Antioch City Council for $100,000 to put an end to the string of shootings […]
3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Stunning model Christen Goff teases bust in racy red bikini after marrying NFL star
MODEL Christen Goff frills fans in a racy red bikini — and shows why she’s the mane attraction for her husband.
The 31-year-old is married to Detroit Lions American football star quarterback Jared Goff, 29.
Capture Media AgencyStunning model and actress Christen Goff posed in a racy red bikini for a photoshoot[/caption]
GettyChristen married NFL hubby Jared Goff in June this year[/caption]
He popped the question in 2022, but they didn’t get hitched until June this year.
Christen is also an actress and starred in 2019 sci-fi movie Auggie.
She plays an avatar who becomes the obsession of a retired older man after he puts on virtual reality glasses.
GettyPeople gather outside the British Embassy in Tehran to stage a demonstration in support of Iranian missile attacks on Israel[/caption]
The key question is whether that retaliation is somehow choreographed to simply send a message to Iran, or whether it is calculated to do some real damage to Iranian facilities.
On Tuesday night, former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett tweeted saying: “This is the greatest opportunity in 50 years to change the face of the Middle East.”
He was arguing Israel should destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to “fatally cripple this terrorist regime”.
Bennett was expressing an increasingly prevalent view in Israel — that this is their moment.
That the wheel has turned so much in the last two to three weeks that they have a chance to change the basic dynamics of their security problem.
The idea is they hit all of their opponents hard — including the Iranians — and it will push them all back for five years or more and give Israel breathing space.
With both Hamas and Hezbollah seriously degraded, it must be tempting for the Israelis to think that way.
But it’s also very risky. Iran has vowed to strike back if it is targeted by Israel.
If it is choreographed to send a message, then there is a fair chance this round of attacks will go no further.
But if it’s designed to do as much damage to Iranian targets as possible, there will be another Iranian response.
And it probably won’t be missiles next time, because they aren’t working very well for Iran.
It could be direct attacks on shipping in the Gulf, or initiating terrorist attacks on Israelis or Israeli facilities around the world.
It could also mean attacks on Western facilities, particularly those of America and Britain.
ReutersIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there will be a retaliation — and I believe that it will come soon[/caption]
When Iran can’t get at the Israelis, they go for us. So that’s possible if it goes further.
We will find out soon enough what response the Israelis will launch.
And then we can work out whether we’re heading into a very dangerous regional war.
Or whether it gives us a chance to ratchet back to where we were a couple of weeks ago.
3 days agoWorld LeaksComments Off on Defiant kids play on Iranian rocket as Israelis hail ‘miracle of Tel Aviv’ after just one killed in 181-missile blitz
ISRAELIS who cheated death in Iran’s 181-missile blitz hailed “The Miracle of Tel Aviv” yesterday.
AFPKids stand on top of the remains of an Iranian missile in the Negev desert near Arad, a city in Israel[/caption]
ReutersPeople inspect the ballistic missile lying in the desert[/caption]
Families dashed to shelters as some missiles made it through, along with white hot shrapnel from those that did not.
Meanwhile kids played on one downed Iranian missile, summing up the relief and defiance of the Israeli people.
At Shalhevet Primary School, in the southern suburb of Gedera, a missile smashed into the playground just a few hours after children as young as five gathered to celebrate the Jewish New Year.
Father-of-three Yoni Karniel told The Sun: “A half-ton warhead exploded at the exact spot where the children held their party. It would have wiped all of them out.”
Yoni, 29 — son of the school’s principal — added: “Four classrooms were completely destroyed.
“But it was the only unpopulated building in the entire neighbourhood. Today we are all thanking God for an absolute miracle.”
In the northern Tel Aviv suburb of Hod HaSharon another rocket exploded yards from homes.
Other near misses in the 7.30pm bombardment included a huge blast on a patch of parkland, totally destroying a disused youth club and damaging 100 homes with a mushroom cloud of blazing debris.
But again, no one was hurt after residents followed home defence alerts and dashed for shelters.
Artist Shmulik Succary, 83, reached one with his wife an instant before the explosion erupted.
He told The Sun: “We realised we needed to get to safety fast and closed the door of the shelter a few seconds before an enormous boom rocked the entire neighbourhood.
“All our windows were blown in and debris was flying everywhere. I’ve never seen such destruction and would definitely have died if I’d stayed in my home. I still can’t believe we lived through it.”
Mayor Amir Kochavi said: “This was not only a miracle but a great show of discipline by people who saved themselves by responding to the alerts and heading for shelters. Many people would have died if that missile had landed just a few metres from where it did. And we are thankful that no one was hurt among all this destruction.”
Across Israel, at least four people were said to have suffered minor wounds while others were hurt running for cover as debris fell.
Dan CharityThe Sun’s Nick Parker in Tel Aviv after the Iranian missile strike[/caption]
ReutersPallbearers carry the casket of Israeli soldier Captain Eitan Itzhak Oster[/caption]
RexBallistic missile is launched from Iran against Israel and intercepted in the sky[/caption]
As damage assessments continued yesterday, Israel Defence Forces top brass admitted military sites had been hit. They declined to give details and said all bases remained fully operational.
IDF chief Herzi Halevi said after a visit to the Tel Nof Airbase: “Thanks to proper behaviour and high-quality defences, damage was relatively minor. We will respond with precision and power.”
A Palestinian labourer in the West Bank village of Nu’eima, near Jericho, was reported to have been the attack’s sole death.
Dad-of-three Sameh al-Asali, 37, was killed instantly. A shocking video circulated on social media claimed to show him being crushed by a massive section of a falling rocket.
Pictures later showed a long missile casing lying next to the victim’s sheet-covered body.
Family’s grief
Jericho governor Hussein Hamayel confirmed: “A Palestinian worker was killed when pieces of a rocket fell from the sky and hit him.”
Four other Palestinians were reportedly injured by shrapnel from the same missile.
I would like to send my heartfelt condolences to the families of our heroes who fell today in Lebanon.
Benjamin Netanyahu
The dead man’s grieving family revealed he was born in Jabalia in Gaza — now a stronghold of Hamas terrorists.
He was one of the thousands of Gazan labourers given Israeli work permits who were stranded in Israel after the October 7 atrocities.
They put that down to the country’s defences in co-operation with US and British air forces. Neighbouring Jordan said it also intercepted missiles and drones over its airspace.
But Western analysts discounted the claim and branded the blitz an embarrassing flop.
APAn Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from northern Israel towards Lebanon[/caption]
ReutersIran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pictured at a meeting in Tehran[/caption]
